


Ireul is DOOMed

by Jsyrin, Rex_Lupin



Series: ToZverse [9]
Category: Doom (Video Games), Neon Genesis Evangelion, ゼロの使い魔 | Zero no Tsukaima | The Familiar of Zero
Genre: DOOMSLAYER is there too I guess, Doom Eternal Spoilers, Gen, Hell on Earth, Ireul is a robosexual, Metaphysical technobabble, Mostly just Hayden and Ireul actually, Olivia Pierce is a bitch, Samuel Hayden's sexy voice, Shenanigans, Surprisingly little focus on violence, Technobabble, VEGA is a sweetie, or something like that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25683943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jsyrin/pseuds/Jsyrin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rex_Lupin/pseuds/Rex_Lupin
Summary: The Angel of Terror has found herself with a brand new research project!In her drive to find out a brand new way of making Angelic energy production both more efficient and increase their power output, she scours the multiverse for a universe with a likely place to start her project.She winds up working for a certain megacorporation mining for energy on Mars.The UAC.Oh no.
Series: ToZverse [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1625149
Comments: 23
Kudos: 52





	1. In Which the Plot of DOOM (2016) Starts

“.... Hmmmm….” Ireul was… at a loss for words. In the time that she’d been working for the UAC ever since Leliel dumped her into this hellish future version of Earth, she’d thought she was close to a new breakthrough in how she could increase the power level of her family even more, though frustratingly, nothing had seemed to work.

Probably because the UAC was more focused on digging up iron ore and mining some kind of potentially useful energy source on Mars to try and alleviate the desperate need for new resources that was at the forefront of the current energy crisis than directly working on soul magics and extradimensional generators. 

Enter one Doctor Samuel Hayden.

And also that bitch Olivia Pierce.

Ireul kind of hated Olivia, mostly because she was a snooty bitch who had very little interest in anything other than being like some kind of typical entitled white lady- hell, she’d even gone on a spiritual pilgrimage in South America of all things.

And by Enter, Ireul meant that literally, the gigantic robotic body of Doctor Hayden striding into her lab with all the presence and gravitas of someone who knew exactly how much power he wielded, and knew exactly how to use it.

Ireul would never admit it to anyone, but Doctor Hayden’s voice was… well.

There was a reason as to why she kept spare underwear under her work station, and it wasn’t just in case of overnight lab sessions.

**_“Ireul de la Valliere,”_ ** the towering robot man spoke, leaning down slightly so she wouldn’t have to crane her neck all the way back to make eye contact with the blue LED strip making up the entirety of his face.  **_“I understand you have some… questions about our latest series of Mars probes. Specifically, about the programming you were tasked with implementing.”_ **

“Oh, uh, yessir!” Ireul squeaked and tried not to soak her panties right then and there, swallowing thickly and forcing down a blush as she turned her screen around to display the hundreds of thousands of lines of code she’d written almost entirely by herself. “You see- um, I’ve been having trouble getting any data back from the sensor teams, so I can’t properly add in the calibration tools to make sure the actual sensors on the probes can scan for the energy signatures we’re looking for- and, honestly, if I don’t know what we’re looking for, I don’t think I can make the scanners find it.”

The massive robot man nodded, completely understanding Ireul’s code despite the sheer density of it scrolling past.  **_“Understood. There’s a great need of secrecy between groups on this project, but I can assure you, you will have your data by the end of the day. You of course know how to sign the work NDAs, I’m sure.”_ **

“Yes sir! Doctor!” Ireul nodded rapidly. “If I get the data, I should have results by midnight, Doctor. I will not let you down!”

**_“Very good,”_ ** Doctor Hayden gave Ireul a curt nod in response, then turned and strode out of the room with Olivia (that bitch) trailing behind him.  **_“VEGA, deliver miss de la Valliere her relevant documents and NDAs, and make sure the sensor division is appropriately reprimanded for holding up production of our mining probes.”_ **

_ “At once, sir.” _

With that, Ireul was left alone in an empty lab- well, empty save for the few assistants she kept around to do the stuff she didn’t need to do herself and also VEGA, the ever-present AI manning the entire facility on Mars.

With her assistants carefully sent off to go do other things out of earshot and her microphone for VEGA muted for a few minutes, Ireul sat down in her chair with a shaky sigh and immediately changed her panties with a quiet little groan. “God  _ damn _ he’s got a sexy voice- I need to invest in something absorbent otherwise I’m gonna end up blowing half my budget on new underwear!”

She took a deep breath and let it out again, before unmuting VEGA. “I could use this data now, VEGA. Thank you in advance.”

_ “Of course, Doctor de la Valliere. I am sending the data now.” _

True to its word, VEGA sent over the data along with all the relevant NDAs within moments, allowing Ireul to finally progress on her job of…

Er.

Hm…

“VEGA, correct me if I’m wrong, but this doesn’t look like sensor data for  _ mining _ probes, this looks like the sensor data for  _ search and retrieval drones _ ,” Ireul asked, chewing on her lip and furrowing her brow as she stared up at the sensor camera that let VEGA keep an eye on the lab. “Is… there something I’m not in on? Because if we’re supposed to be mining the Argent Fracture, I don’t know why we’d need sensors calibrated for life signals and- what is this, carbon dating data?”

_ “I’m afraid that information is classified beyond your clearance.” _

VEGA’s answer was as ominous as it was expected- for all that Ireul was a high level programmer and technician in the UAC Mars base, she knew that there was… something weird going on in the upper management that she still wasn’t privy to. Despite being the head of her section. Despite members of her section being invited to meetings with upper management for unknown reasons quite regularly. 

“I could use some extra clearance then,” Ireul snarked to herself, starting to work on her code. “I’ve heard of working blind and all, but this is a bit much...”

_ “Unfortunately, the required security clearance that would allow you to understand what is happening also has a 46.12529 percent chance of completely removing your current usefulness to the facility. Doctor Hayden deemed the risk too high to allow you exposure to that level of knowledge, though in the case of an emergency, I am authorized to summarize the relevant information in brief.” _

Ireul blinked slowly at VEGA’s answer, the cool, friendly voice doing wonders to soothe the light burn of annoyance she felt at having to implement code for a thing she wasn’t even sure the actual purpose of. But either way, it was… fine. There was science to be done, she was getting paid a metric shitload to work on a tiny planetoid millions of miles from the comforts of Earth, she was probably the first person in her family to  _ leave _ the Earth behind anyway, and that at least got her bragging rights.

So. Sure. She’d deal with whatever the hell was going on one step at a time- even if something about the facility was increasingly giving her the heebie jeebies just from the fact that it felt like something was  _ constantly _ scraping its fingers against her AT Field like nails down a chalkboard and only getting worse over time.

Days came and went. She submitted her code to the upper management a midnight after getting the data back in the first place, and life went on. She gathered new data, improved on the old ones... and yet, the heebie jeebies didn’t stop. It was starting to peeve her a little, to be frank.

Honestly, with all the secrecy and the increasing amount of death metal posters lining the walls and the ever present smell of blood whenever she walked past the upper management’s perpetually locked doors, she was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, there was a cult forming in the UAC.

Maybe. 

Or maybe her assistants were really into death metal and the upper management was vampires. She’d seen weirder things.

Well, on the family Network, at least.

Though, that bitch Olivia Pierce really was starting to look like a deformed cult leader, what with her trembling and shivering and- er… extremely debilitating medical issues that required a painfully grafted exoskeleton to correct. 

Hm. Well, that last one was kind of rude to think about, but that bitch  _ was _ almost constantly rambling about  _ Hell _ and  _ Artifacts _ these days whenever she thought no one was watching so maybe there was some truth to all the Cult talk.

Ireul mostly just hoped that she wouldn’t end up having to fight off Cthulhu or some shit. She just wasn’t  _ built _ for that kind of physical nonsense, honestly.

“Hey VEGA,” she asked one day, randomly in the middle of coding.

_ “What is it, Doctor de la Valliere?” _ the AI asked, helpful as always. Ireul hummed.

“I was wondering,” she began. “Is the upper management a cult, or am I just imagining things?”

_ “I am unauthorized to comment one way or another.” _

VEGA commented with the single most sarcastic tone of voice Ireul had ever heard out of the AI. Which, to most people wouldn’t have sounded much different at all, but it was just different enough to be noticeable.

“... Well, that sure explains a lot,” Ireul sighed, palming her face and groaning heavily. “Can you at least tell me how the mining operations are going? I’d rather get the information directly instead of waiting for the sensor crews to give me my data three weeks behind schedule.”

_ “I am sorry, but I am not authorized to give out this data like that.” _

“.... Okay, that either means you found something that’s really bad, or it’s cult stuff,” Ireul sighed again, rubbing her face as she decided that, whatever it was, it honestly wasn’t worth the effort of trying to pry data out of the hands of an AI that wasn’t programmed to give her said data.

And so, she went back to work, day in, day out, slowly chipping away at the cult mystery infesting her workplace with half a mind as she mostly focused on making sure her figures were in place-

At least, until after a few weeks, she felt a wave of  _ god knows what _ bounce off of her AT Field, shattering the entire facility as it rippled through and filled the air with the stench of blood and malice.

_ [WARNING! WARNING! DEMONIC INVASION IS IN PROGRESS! ALL SURVIVING PERSONNEL PLEASE REPORT TO THE EVACUATION SHUTTLES IMMEDIATELY!] _

As Ireul listened to the alarms blaring throughout the Mars base, ears ringing and vision tinged red from the emergency lights, she stared up at the ceiling and sighed with a perfect deadpan.

  
“Is  _ this _ the emergency Doctor Hayden was talking about?”


	2. In Which the Plot of DOOM (2016) Continues in the Background

“So let me get this straight,” Ireul snarled, ducking under the swipe of a Demon and kicking in another’s approximate solar plexus, “the energy we discovered was  _ Actual Hell, _ and our immediate thought was ‘hey, we can power our stuff with it’? It’s probably  _ actual damned souls _ for all we know, but noooo,” she beaned another demon across the head with a pipe, “we just  _ had _ to harvest it, right?”

_ “Affirmative. However, the solution to the current demonic invasion is already being employed. If you would remain calm and seek shelter in the nearest safe zone, I will be able to direct the Slayer your way to provide more reasonable protection.” _

“Oh nooo, I’m doing just fine!” Ireul panted, groaning as she bonked another demon upside the head and yelping as she avoided the retaliatory fireballs from the one’s she’d already ineffectually bonked a few times. “Oh why oh why did I never go to gym class!?”

_ "I will direct the Slayer your way anyway,"  _ VEGA decided.  _ "Please stand by."  _

Ireul just groaned as she followed the helpfully lit paths that VEGA provided her with, already exhausted from actually using her muscles for the first time in combat. Thankfully, the demons- Imps, VEGA called them- were very helpfully thrown off of her scent trail by the inbuilt base defenses, allowing her to lock herself in a safe room without constantly getting assaulted by screaming, fire throwing demons.

“I fucking knew the cult was bad news,” she bemoaned.

_ “Your lack of knowledge of the cult was Doctor Hayden’s way of keeping you safe. As you can see, you are now the sole survivor of the Hell Wave that converted ninety nine point nine repeating percent of the other staff into zombified minions and slash or desecrated corpses.” _

“Real fucking helpful, VEGA!” Ireul shot back, panting as she leaned against the door and took stock of her situation. On the plus side- the safe room had water, food, and several guns with all the munitions and equipment necessary to carry said guns if she so needed to move. On the other hand… THERE WERE A FUCKLOAD OF DEMONS TEARING THE BASE APART.

Ireul kind of regretted asking Leliel to send her to her current cluster, honestly. Just a little. Kind of like how this version of Earth was going through a  _ bit _ of an energy crisis.

Sighing deeply, Ireul went over to the guns and picked one up, weighing it in her arms. "Is Doctor Hayden alive?" she asked as she aimed the gun for a moment, before putting it back and picking up another. "...And is that bitch Pierce dead?" 

_ “Doctor Hayden is alive and well in his office. Doctor Olivia Pierce seems to have been the reason for the Hell Wave, and her current whereabouts are as of yet unknown. Would you like me to run a search for her life signals?” _

VEGA’s voice was soothing and calm, completely at odds with the sounds of demonic shrieking and howling that she could hear outside of the door- though, as Ireul checked over the gun in her hands and made sure the battery cell was fully charged, she couldn’t help but think it sounded a lot like there were… gunshots… mixed in.

“I don’t particularly care about Pierce,” Ireul snapped. “Also, I’m hearing gunshots. Do the demons have guns now or is it the Slayer person?”

_ “Yes. _ ”

“... VEGA, I’m gonna need you to be more clear than that,” Ireul deadpanned, glaring up at the ceiling ineffectually before the door immediately caved open with a shower of blood, bile, and demon parts. Ireul screeched in surprise as she flung herself back, almost throwing up from the smell of dismembered demon now filling the room- sulfur and blood and fecal matter sprayed across the walls and floor, covering every surface.

She thought there might have been a tooth embedded in the wall next to her head, but her attention was taken up by something else before she could check.

A giant of a man, clad in green power armor, bearing a heavy combat shotgun, covered in demon blood and bearing a presence so full of anger and hatred for demons that Ireul almost passed out just from the sheer  _ weight _ of the man’s bloodlust.

"Was the gore really  _ that  _ necessary?" she asked before she could stop herself. 

The green man- probably the “Slayer” VEGA had been talking about- didn’t bother to give her a response and instead simply grabbed her by the shoulders, picked her up with one hand, and plonked her down on  _ his _ shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

Ireul protested vigorously at the Slayer to no avail, and immediately had to cover her mouth with both hands to prevent herself from throwing up as he immediately ran off further into the base with her in tow. 

At just over sixty miles an hour. At a dead sprint.

Ireul didn’t even give any snarky commentary this time, she just stared in a mixture of awe and incredulity.

The Slayer didn’t even  _ slow down _ with her on his shoulders, sprinting through room after room, corridor after corridor as he slaughtered demons with a pistol held loosely in one hand and his legs- literally  _ kicking them apart _ into showers of blood and gore, splattered organs and shattered bones and all sorts of nasty liquids. 

More than once, he’d stomped a demon’s skull into the ground so hard the damn thing near about  _ disintegrated _ , mashed into paste so thoroughly that it was indistinguishable from the blood pouring from the neck stump.

Eventually, though, he’d stopped in front of what Ireul recognized as Doctor Hayden’s office, the both of them splattered with so much gore that Ireul felt like she needed thirty showers at the same time just to feel clean again.

The Slayer, on the other hand, mostly just seemed pissed that he had to drop her off and take a detour instead of killing more demons.

"What the  _ Hell  _ are you  _ made  _ of?" she couldn't help but ask. 

**_“The Slayer is, more or less, made exactly of that- in a sense,”_ ** the robotic tones of Doctor Hayden echoed out as the door opened, inviting the two of them into the office. As the two entered, Ireul bit back a cry of surprise as jets hidden in the door frame sprayed them down with disinfectant and cleaning agents, immediately washing away all the demonic blood and gore and leaving Ireul only slightly soaked to the bone with strange (but thankfully nontoxic) chemicals.

Ireul just sighed and wiped her face off, flopping into the chair set aside for guests, “... You’re gonna have to explain that one a little better, boss.”

**_“The Slayer has the ability to kill demons and absorb the Argent in and around them, empowering not only his armor, but his physical body as well. He is superhuman in every way, shape, and form as far as I can tell, and nothing in Hell itself has been able to kill him despite the untold ages he spent slaughtering them to the very last,”_ ** Doctor Hayden exposited calmly, standing up and motioning for the Slayer to approach the far wall, which opened out into a cabinet full of various guns- though the Slayer only saw fit to take the plasma rifle and chaingun from the racks.

Ireul could see why, considering all the others looked comically small next to the green armored warrior.

“...So what now, Boss?” she asked. “Far as I can tell, you and I are the only survivors around here. What’s the plan?”

**_“The Slayer will need to cut off the source of the Argent in this facility. Doctor Olivia Pierce is behind this incident and will need to be stopped before she brings all of Hell down on our heads,”_ ** Doctor Hayden drawled, pulling up schematics and maps of the base and  _ wow _ Ireul needed to get out of her lab more if she hadn’t realized there were  _ several miles _ of UAC complex outside of the tiny corner her lab occupied.  **_“He knows what he must do. You and I, however, will stay here. You, Doctor de la Valliere, are too useful to risk fighting demons.”_ **

“Vega did say something about me being kept in the dark protecting me from the power of Hell,” Ireul realized. “...You do realize that it sounds like utter bull, right boss?”

**_“You being in the dark kept the cult from poaching you. Since your security clearance was at the bare minimum required to work in this facility, Doctor Pierce and the rest of the cultists assumed you to be useless for their endeavors. They were wrong.”_ ** Doctor Hayden seemed like he was grinning smugly as he leaned forward, the light strip on his faceplate glowing brighter as he spoke. Ireul shifted uncomfortably in her seat, suddenly very aware of the fantasies she’d long since repressed about being in this exact seat with Doctor Hayden looming over her in this exact manner.  **_“Doctor de la Valliere, I will be frank with you. I know you are not human in the slightest. I know you are inhuman in a different manner from the Slayer himself. And I know that your background is entirely falsified. Seeing as the base is in lockdown for the time being and under siege from the very forces of Hell, I would say now is a good time for you to come clean about who and what you truly are.”_ **

Ireul  _ stared. _ “I would just like to say, boss, that right now I’m  _ incredibly _ aroused,” she squeaked.

Doctor Hayden immediately froze, processors audibly whirring for a moment before he leaned back, steepled his fingers in front of his face, and let out a long, hissing sigh as he vented heat from the various ports all over his robotic body.  **_“It’s the voice isn’t it? I have been told by my secretary that monologuing at people is comparable to sexual harassment but I had assumed it was a joke.”_ **

“It’s absolutely the voice,” Ireul agreed, crossing her legs, “but it’s the voice in  _ combination _ with the presence, your  _ manufacturing, _ all those other details...” She fanned herself. “Doctor  _ likes~ _ ”

**_“I managed to hire an inhuman robosexual,”_ ** Doctor Hayden deadpanned, resting a hand on his forehead and looking for all the world like he wanted to pinch a brow that was no longer there.  **_“Wonderful. But we’re getting off topic. Ireul de la Valliere, would you care to explain what exactly you are that you manage to consistently read as an_ ** **_infinite power source_ ** **_to VEGA’s sensors?”_ **

Ireul unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirt. “That’d be this beauty right here,” she mentioned offhand, gesturing to her shiny, faintly glowing Core resting between her collarbones.

She rose and sketched a bow. “I am Ireul, the Angel of Terror. My Family, ever-growing, consists of dozens of Greater Angels and several Gods, we all run off of a power source of infinite energy, and I came here to look for ways to make our power output more efficient.” She made a face. “That part, by the way, isn’t going as well as I had hoped.”

**_“I see. Color me interested in this… process,”_ ** Doctor Hayden drawled, leaning forward slightly at Ireul’s mention of infinite energy.  **_“How exactly does this process work? And how much energy can one output using this method?”_ **

Ireul rolled her eyes. “You’re basically implanted with a Core and then you get to use the power of your Soul alongside sixteenth dimensional mathematics to press your will on the world. The Output... Eh.” She waved her hand in a vague pattern. “Entirely depends on your configuration. ‘S why I came here in the first place - what’s the point of an infinite barrel if you still have a tiny tap?”

**_“An entirely understandable line of thought,”_ ** Doctor Hayden nodded, the whirring of his joints providing a rather soothing backdrop of noise to the dead silence of the office itself.  **_“But I must wonder… How exactly does one use their soul in order to power an entire infinite energy generator? Sixteenth dimensional mathematics may be required in order to calculate output and describe the process, but I assume that the soul itself is the important part.”_ **

“We basically use the power of infinitely repeating spirals to help project our Will to the world,” Ireul admitted. “It’s filtered through the Soul, yes, but I’m configured more towards  _ application _ and  _ research _ than actual  _ mechanics... _ I’d have to ask a Progenitor, I think.”

**_“I see. Interesting. Very interesting,”_ ** Doctor Hayden murmured to himself before standing and folding his hands behind his back, staring out the window onto the cold surface of Mars with something resembling the weight of gravitas around him.  **_“What exactly is the process necessary to obtain one of these cores? If they are even a fraction as powerful as you claim they are, then even a single one of them could resolve Earth’s energy crisis in an instant, without the…”_ **

He paused, turning to face Ireul with a sort of body language that almost seemed to imply some kind of dry amusement. 

**_“... deleterious effects of Argent mining,”_ ** he finished smoothly, settling back into his chair as he pulled up his work monitor and began quietly relaying instructions to the Slayer, who was even now still making quite the ruckus if the camera footage Vega was displaying was to be believed.

Ireul rolled her eyes. “Yeaaaaaah well, it used to be that you had to either be born from a Progenitor or spend a week tinkering, but these days it feels like everyone has a supply or something...” 

She paused. “I should actually  _ ask _ someone now that I think about it. Seriously. I feel like I’m the only Traveller without one...”

**_“Questions perhaps for later,”_ ** Doctor Hayden deadpanned, motioning at the alarm on the wall that quite clearly described the base situation as, in colloquial words, “absolutely swimming with demons all up their collective asses”.  **_“As it is right now, I believe the only thing we are capable of doing without risking our lives is to sit back and allow the Slayer to do his best work.”_ **

Ireul hummed. “...May I change panties again, boss?”

**_“I would prefer if you never brought that subject up in front of me again,”_ ** Doctor Hayden sighed, a low, bassy droning sound almost completely hidden behind the hissing of his pressure release vents.  **_“But seeing as the demonic presence in this section of the base is cleared out, I suppose you may. Take a gun, first. Just in case.”_ **

Ireul waved irritably. “No, I have several dozen spare pairs in a pocket, I just want to use the privacy screen over there.”

**_“... Very well. Use it as you see fit. Just remember to use the garbage disposal when you finish,”_ ** Doctor Hayden palmed his face with the solid clank of hi-tech ceramic composites striking against triple reinforced alloy, vents hissing again as he released yet more heat buildup.  **_“The things I put up with…”_ **

“Getting all hot and bothered under the collar?” Ireul teased, skipping behind the aforementioned privacy screen and getting busy. “Just the two of us here, boss~”

**_“Miss Valliere, I am your_ ** **_employer_ ** **_and a_ ** **_robot_ ** **_. I neither have a sex drive nor do I have the means to implement such a function,”_ ** Hayden responded, curiously folding his legs beneath his desk and leaning forward to approximate a glare in Ireul’s general direction.  **_“I’d suggest you keep that line of inquiry for someone else, in a situation that isn’t the threat of both of our imminent deaths at the hands of a legion of demons kept at bay by a single man in green power armor.”_ **

“And I’m a sentient colony of microorganisms operating in a human shape and much like a computer,” Ireul deadpanned right back. “Anything can have a sex drive. But  _ fiiiiiine, _ I can drop it if you want me that badly.”

  
**_“Good. I have more important things to attend to right now,”_ ** Hayden muttered, turning away from Ireul and returning to giving the Slayer increasingly agitated sounding instructions.


	3. In Which DOOMSLAYER Continues Killing in the Background and Ireul is Bored

“How in the sweet diddly fuck is  _ one dude _ that good at killing demons?” Ireul muttered, watching in something akin to horrified shock as the Slayer, or as VEGA called him in full, DOOMSLAYER in allcaps, tore through the demonic forces in the base, blew up the Argent tower that actually supplied power to the Earth, and then tore the literal plane of Hell itself a gaping, bloody metaphorical new asshole with nothing but his fists, his size 15 armored boots, and more guns than any human should realistically be able to carry at once.

"Seriously," she added. "If he was a video game character I'd understand, but this is just all kinds of bullshit, isn't it? What the  _ fuck  _ is he?" 

**_“He is the Doomslayer,”_ ** Hayden answered, as if that actually meant anything to Ireul beyond a fancy title.  **_“He is the scourge of Hell itself, and has killed them across untold realms across untold millennia. From what the retrieval teams managed to pull out, the demons have records of him going back thousands of years- all of which have described him as nothing short of an unstoppable juggernaut with an infinite thirst for the dying screams of demon kind.”_ **

_ “The Slayer has personally contributed to the total genocide and extinction of well over two hundred individual demonic subspecies.” _

VEGA spoke up after Hayden, generating a list on the screen of names that meant literally nothing to Ireul, though both the AI and Hayden seemed quite impressed. Kind of hard not to be, Ireul thought, considering that a single man caused two hundred genocides with presumably nothing but his fists and whatever weapons he could scrounge up in Hell.

“Sure is a good thing I’m Holy, technically,” Ireul muttered.

For a few moments, nobody said anything, simply watching as the Slayer continued quite literally ripping and tearing his way through various arenas all the way around Hell, all the way up to and including beating the absolute shit out of a demon literally six times his size and murdering it to death with a chainsaw.

“... Where the  _ fuck _ did he get a chainsaw!?” Ireul asked, staring at the screen in sheer disbelief. “Did we just have a random chainsaw on the base!? And if so,  _ why!?” _

**_“Perhaps he scavenged it from a demon,”_ ** Doctor Hayden rumbled, for once sounding as lost as she was.

_ “I believe it was retrieved from a corpse somewhere on the lower levels. Why it was impaled in a corpse, I am unsure. The cargo records show no chainsaw should be present, so I can only assume that it was brought by some form of demon, despite usually not needing additional weaponry.” _

Even VEGA sounded a little lost, all three of them more or less doing the equivalent of scratching their heads as the Slayer continued ripping and tearing, blowing shit up, and more or less making a massive wreck of things before being transported out of hell and back into the regular world of the living.

“... Well, that seems to have taken care of a good chunk of the problem,” Ireul muttered, watching as Hayden directed the Slayer in the direction of the Lazarus Labs- wait what?

“... Uh, boss? Isn’t that where upper management was?” Ireul asked, then consulted her mental map of the area and bit her lip. “Isn’t that where  _ my _ lab was? Er, the first one I had to abandon after someone spilled a bunch of hazardous waste there.”

**_"Yes,"_ ** Doctor Hayden rumbled,  **_"Yes it is. What of it?"_ **

“... Just wondering,” Ireul muttered, then bit her lip and sat back and laced her fingers together. “Hm…”

_ “The Lazarus Labs contain the sum total of Doctor Pierce’s research. The Slayer will be able to stop her once we know what she is planning.” _

VEGA called out, splitting his focus between guiding the Slayer through the complex and the conversation in the office. 

" _ Evidently,"  _ Ireul snarked, "the bitch was planning to cause a Hell invasion. Aren't we  _ already  _ stopping that with the Slayer around?" 

**_“Olivia is smarter than just a cultist trying to cause chaos in the name of death and destruction,”_ ** Hayden responded, leaning forward with his chin on his hands as his joints whirred and clicked.  **_“She has something that she wants out of Hell. What it is at the moment I don’t know, but it certainly has to be something she thinks is worth it. Immortality, perfect health, wealth beyond measure. Something like that.”_ **

"The  _ other  _ side has that too," Ireul grumbled irritably. "And  _ without  _ the demonic downsides to boot." 

**_“Yes, well, we’ve yet to find any sign of angels in this universe. Present company excluded of course,”_ ** Hayden chuckled at his own joke, which almost made Ireul want to revise her opinion of him if he had enough levity to make a  _ dad joke _ in the middle of what was currently a rather serious demonic invasion of Mars. Oh who was she kidding, that was honestly kinda funny.

"...I can't believe I'm saying this in the middle of a goddamn demonic invasion," Ireul sighed, "but I'm fucking bored. There's literally nothing to do other than watch a guy rip and tear, and no _ body _ to do either. This sucks." 

**_"_ ** **_Please_ ** **_stop propositioning me,"_ ** Doctor Hayden sighed. 

<>

“For lack of anything better to do, do you have a whiteboard in here anywhere?” Ireul spoke up again after what seemed like  _ hours _ of sitting around and futilely trying to connect to the internet back on Earth- even with their recent breakthroughs in instant data transfer across astronomical distances, there still wasn’t exactly a way to receive that data after the Slayer’s persistent rampage had put the base down onto low power mode due to destroying a shitload of Argent cores. “I wanna see if I can use my self evolution equations to map out a higher output level for me and my low output, research based siblings.”

**_"In the storage closet,"_ ** Doctor Hayden motioned. He scrutinised the Angel for a long moment.  **_"Am I allowed to watch you work, Doctor de la Vallière? Or is it too technical for a mere human like myself?"_ **

“Well, if you can comprehend math in sixteen dimensions with at least fifty variables at once and using a data structure that literally does not follow the normal laws of physics in the slightest then you should be fine. Given that Argent is… actually fairly similar to the kind of energy us Angels produce- albeit weaker and in much lower supply, you shouldn’t have  _ too _ much trouble following along,” Ireul shrugged and immediately dragged a glass whiteboard out of the closet, drawing on it with the provided holographic pens to produce a thoroughly complicated scrawl of math and diagrams that seemed less like a list of various equations and more like some kind of overly complicated flowchart with a revolving CG model of some kind of fractal torus off to the side.

**_"I'm actually rather impressed that you managed to draw all those diagrams by hand,"_ ** Doctor Hayden commented, taking copious notes.  **_"This is fascinating, by the way."_ **

“Thanks! This is just the beginning, though- all of this math is just working out my own natural bio-patterns and calculating my energy flows. What I need to do now is rework my own equations in the framework of my evolutionary ability so I can increase my output and theoretically gain enough output power to do something… well, actually I’m not entirely sure what output level I need, considering that I don’t have anything I really need to do,” Ireul shrugged, tapping the glass screen of the whiteboard and flicking it to the next slide so she could start writing again. “... Y’know, out of everything the UAC has ever made, these whiteboards are honestly my favorite thing. Y’know, other than your vocal synthesizer.”

**_“You keep saying that,”_ ** Doctor Hayden grumbled.  **_“And I keep telling you that I am your_ ** **_employer._ ** **_”_ **

“Well yes, but it is still the single best sounding voice ever made by a synthesizer. That’s just an objective fact,” Ireul responded cheekily, winking at Doctor Hayden before turning back to the board and sticking her tongue out, tapping the marker against her forehead as she started writing more and more equations, erasing them and starting over repeatedly as she reached a dead end over and over.

**_"Just a thought,"_ ** Doctor Hayden rumbled from behind her, leaning in to examine her calculations,  **_"but don't you think it's wise to_ ** **_set a goal first,_ ** **_Doctor?"_ **

“Well, my  _ goal _ is to get the absolute highest level of output I can with self evolution, boss,” Ireul responded, coughing awkwardly and rubbing her thighs together gently as she tried to think unsexy thoughts about demons and gore and demons getting ripped into piles of gore by the DOOMSLAYER- oh good, that worked. “Er- that is, if I can manage to bridge the gap. There’s kind of a recursion issue going on in there that I can’t seem to manage a good work around for…”   
  


**_“This looks remarkably similar to multifractal expansion,”_ ** the good Doctor murmured.

  
“It kind of  _ is,”  _ Ireul shrugged again, sighing as she tapped her marker against her chin once more, chewing on her lip thoughtfully before just sighing, shrugging, and sitting back in her chair. “Euuuggghhh… this is gonna take a few hours…”


	4. In Which The Plot of Doom (2016) Finally Passes By I Guess

There was a quiet solemnity in the air a few scant hours later, Ireul being quite a bit shell shocked at the sheer  _ speed _ with which the Slayer had not only destroyed the entirety of the Hell invasion, but also destroyed the Argent tower, completely fucked Earth’s energy starved nations once again, and also killed the single other person that Ireul could relate to in some way or another.

“Rest in Peace VEGA, you will be missed,” Ireul sighed, pressing her hand against one of the terminals of her workstation as she quickly copied the files she had onto a portable drive, looking around as the facility slowly began to power down due to the lack of Argent fueling its generators. 

She still couldn’t believe that Doctor Hayden had just randomly more or less betrayed the Slayer like that near the end just to pick up some kind of cool sword thing, but she supposed that the Slayer didn’t exactly have a place in the UAC and was better served murdering the absolute shitballs out of Hell for the time being.

Ireul almost felt sorry for the demons.

_ Almost _ .

"...so what  _ is  _ this sword thing anyway?" she couldn't help but ask. 

**_“The demonic Crucible is both an extremely potent power conduit, power source, and weapon,”_ ** Hayden replied, carrying a box of supplies as he passed by Ireul, his servos whirring restlessly as he walked along.  **_“The Slayer was going to destroy it, so I decided to repurpose it. While I will not be allowing any more forays into Hell, nor opening any more portals, I believe that for the sake of Earth and your own personal project, the unique energies contained within the Crucible may provide some sort of answers. If nothing else, I suspect you may be able to alter the Crucible itself into a rudimentary Soul container for use as a sustainable energy source for Earth.”_ **

Ireul hummed. "Probably, but I'd need to examine it first. Like, personally. It's entirely possible that this energy is inherently incompatible with me - conceptual differences, etc..." 

**_“Perhaps, but an energy source is an energy source. Potential to open a Hell portal aside, the energy within this Crucible is pure Argent. Without the excess of Hell energy corrupting it, I suspect it will be much less incompatible provided a proper filter is set in place,”_ ** Doctor Hayden shrugged and continued moving supplies about for a good few moments before going over to one of the few remaining active wall panels and disinfecting the laboratory.  **_“All power remaining in the base has been diverted to this laboratory. I will not pressure you and say that you need to come up with a solution to the energy crisis on Earth as fast as humanly possible, but I will warn you: The Argent energy stockpile still remaining on Earth is only enough for another two months of sustained activity at best. We are on a horrific time crunch. The facility’s remaining resources are yours to do with as you please. You know what you must do.”_ **

Ireul  _ sighed,  _ before rolling up her sleeves and grinning. "Well then," she drawled. "Just need to  _ save  _ the world, alllllll by myself. That's a  _ first." _

Her grin widened as her eyes took on an unearthly glow.  _ "No pressure, right?"  _

<>

**_“I don’t know whether to be jealous of your work, or terrified that you managed to turn the Crucible into an infinite energy generator,”_ ** Hayden spoke up nearly six weeks later, folding his hands behind his back as Ireul carefully lifted the mass of bones and flesh and Core material that was the restructured Crucible into the holding chambers. The repairs to the Mars base were still ongoing, but thanks to preliminary tests, they’d managed to actually reactivate and rebuild enough of the systems that they could send a message back to Earth requesting more staff after a “generator malfunction” had wiped out most of the staff and destroyed a good chunk of just about everything.

But now?

After nearly a month and a half of work, Ireul finally had the Crucible running properly, utilizing a potent mix of energies along with a jury rigged partial soul formed from harvested Argent energy to create a mindless, nonsentient Core- one which would be able to safely output enough energy to power Earth for thousands of years to come thanks to its extradimensional singularities and failsafes.

And the best part was, it couldn’t even be used to open a portal to Hell, meaning there was no risk of corruption or demonic invasion!

“Try being proud,” Ireul suggested. “Or thankful. Or better yet, horny, I’ve had to keep myself from jumping your metal bones for  _ weeks _ and I’m honestly nearing my limit.”

**_“I’m sending you on shore leave,”_ ** Hayden deadpanned, facepalming and groaning audibly as his vents hissed out a truly prodigious amount of steam in response to Ireul’s proposition.  **_“You may fantasize about me back on Earth, but I would prefer this facility retain the illusion of being a sexual harassment free area.”_ **

“You’re blushing,” Ireul pointed out. “Metaphorically, that is. You’re clearly interested. Why hide it,  _ Doctor~ _ ?”

**_“_ ** **_Enough,_ ** **_”_ ** Doctor Hayden snarled.  **_“I do_ ** **_not_ ** **_appreciate your behavior,_ ** **_Doctor._ ** **_”_ **

Ireul immediately blanched, waving her hands in surrender as she laughed awkwardly. “Ahaha, alright, I get it, I get it! Stopping now!”

**_“Good. See to it that it_ ** **_stays_ ** **_that way,”_ ** Doctor Hayden sighed again, joints whirring loudly and displaying his annoyance clearly as steam hissed out of his vents.

“...and now I’m bored again,” Ireul sighed.

**_“Do find a way to keep yourself occupied until the new staff arrives,”_ ** Doctor Hayden grumbled, shaking his head as he turned around and left Ireul to her own devices, already heading towards the hangar bay so he could properly greet the new arrivals once their shuttle landed.  **_“And pretend that we didn’t have to deal with all of our staff dying horribly to a demonic invasion. Remember- it was an unforeseen series of power failures and explosions,_ ** **_not_ ** **_demons.”_ **

"What demons?" Ireul asked cheekily. "I was just locked away in my lab the entire time." 

Doctor Hayden just snorted and walked away, leaving Ireul behind as the doors hissed shut behind him.

Ireul immediately wished VEGA were still “alive”, if only because the AI would have a suitably snarky and/or gently admonishing response to Ireul’s impulsive words.

“... Ah dammit, now I’m sad again…” Ireul groaned, sighing and flopping down into her lab chair. “Shit.”

<>

“Right this way, folks~!” Ireul greeted cheerfully as the gaggle of scientists and soldiers emerged from the airlock. “Boss ain’t here yet, so I’m doin’ the job. Also, I get to pick assistants this time, preferably ones that can  _ avoid _ explosions-”

**_“Doctor de la Valliere,”_ ** Doctor Hayden rumbled, stomping up from behind her.  **_“_ ** **_Please_ ** **_refrain from scaring the staff.”_ **

“Ah damn, there’s the boss,” Ireul grinned unrepentantly, taking in the now apprehensive faces of the various staff, though the soldiers seemed to take the joke rather well. Lucky her, she got a crowd of stiffs who couldn’t handle a joke. Damn.

“Ah- uh, ma’am? Is it um... Is it safe to be on the base? Are we sure the power failures have no chance of happening again?” one guy, some balding dude with glasses asked, raising his hand awkwardly. “And um… What was the cause of the explosions anyway? Just so um, so we can avoid that risk and prevent it from happening again.”

"One of the upper management types thought it a great idea to start a cult and mess with the base systems," Ireul cut her boss off, leading to what she imagined was probably a furious glare. The hiss of steam behind her told her she was probably on the right track. 

"So as long as  _ you lot  _ stay away from vital systems and/or cults," Ireul plowed on, "You should be fine. Any other questions?" 

“.... I think I’m good,” the bald guy finished, coughing awkwardly into his hand and stepping back into line, while the rest of the newly boarded crew began heading towards their assigned areas. A few of the soldiers stayed back, along with a man in a full armored exo-atmospheric construction suit- Hank, the head of engineering and the guy currently in charge of making sure repairs went smoothly.

Ireul hadn’t met him before, but apparently he had a reputation for keeping his mouth shut, doing quick, efficient, and top quality work at astonishingly fair prices.

**_“Were you planning on ‘helping’ further, Doctor de la Valliere,”_ ** Doctor Hayden rumbled from behind her,  **_“Or am I ‘allowed’ to speak to the staff I actually_ ** **_asked_ ** **_for?”_ **

Ireul shrugged and turned to leave.. “Yeah, sure, boss. Anyway, if you ever change your mind, well, you know where to find me~,” she added as a parting shot.

Doctor Hayden sighed.

**_“Need to put a muzzle on that woman…”_ **


	5. In Which Technobabble Happens

Ireul put her feet up on her brand new desk in her brand new lab on Earth and grinned. Sure, she’d have preferred to be back on Mars with Doctor Hayden and his sexy voice, but after solving the energy crisis there wasn’t exactly a need for her to stay on a shitty space station with shit wifi and zero access to all the stuff she missed about Earth for any longer than it took for her to take the shuttle back, so…

Shiny new lab, shiny new desk, shiny new office. 

And, best of all, shiny new apartment, fully soundproofed so no one could complain about her doing  _ things _ in the middle of the night accompanied by audio recordings of some of Doctor Hayden’s more memorable monologues.

Granted, she  _ did  _ occasionally wonder just  _ what  _ was going on on Mars these days, but she invariably just shrugged her shoulders and called none of her fucking business. 

Shame Doctor Hayden had her number blocked, though. 

But more to the point, her current research was… fascinating, honestly. With the samples of Argent she’d managed to retrieve with the help of Doctor Hayden, and what few readings of the energies of Hell itself the Mars base still had before it all went to shit, she’d managed to unlock a truly startling amount of information on the state of Souls in this universe.

Like, for example, the fact that they actually existed here as a true, mathematically defined property, instead of a sort of vaguely defined metaphysical thing that had to be forced into proper multi-dimensional existence by Angelic intervention.

Y’know, like how they were in the place Kyuu and Raziel and Asuka and Bardiel and Kei and Cho went to.

“Hey, Amanda?” she thumbed the button for the intercom, calling up her personal assistant. “Do I have any meetings with the board today, or am I clear for just research and development?”

_ “You’re clear, Doctor,” _ came the prompt reply.  _ “Have fun, Ireul.” _

The Angel grinned. “Oh, I  _ will. _ ”

Without another word, she immediately threw herself into her research once again, whirling around the lab in a frenzy of-

Well.

It was less a frenzy and more her puttering around with her tongue halfway out of her mouth as she pulled various bits of equipment out of their cabinets and plugged various files and data bits into said equipment and used her own Core and Angelic nature to interface with the machines to make them run better while double, triple, and quadruple checking her own calculations over and over using the combined processing power of the entire computer lab plus her own Core to run two streams of experiments at the same time- The first being the attempts to try and decipher just what the hell Argent energy actually  _ was _ since it resonated so well with human souls that it was almost insane, the second being the analysis of the energy her own soul put out in order to see if she could do some wonky eight dimensional physics on it to try and make her own output levels reach a combat Angel’s specs.

Which, if it worked, would be her legacy in the Network, a patch for increasing power outputs to truly unprecedented levels that no one had seen before, not even the Yuis or Uriel.

“Huh, that’s funny,” she muttered at one point. “It’s almost like there’s... actual souls already in there? Hm. How the Hell, heh, does  _ that _ work?”

She scratched her head and pursed her lips, thinking on it a little more before shrugging and stretching out her senses further, slipping deeper into her Angelic soul and stretching into the infinite of space and time.

Higher dimensions unfolded before her very eyes, space in three dimensions collapsed into a fractal array of timelines and parallel realms, an ever expanding fractal mess of thousands of strands and equations that danced past her metaphysical eyes until she zeroed in on the few strands of energy that made up the Argent sample. Wisps of ephemeral data flooded into her mind, the screams of souls stripped from life and tortured, combined with an extra form of energy that hadn’t yet been catalogued along with the energy of Hell itself, processed until it was a shining beacon of interdimensional light and power and-

“... Holy shit, Argent energy is made of tortured souls,” Ireul sat back in her chair, suddenly pale as she realized the true nature of what Earth had been running on for the past year or so. “Argent Energy. Is.  _ Humans.” _

Her expression grew thunderous. "...Dammit, and Boss still has my number blocked. Dammit! And I rigged up an even  _ more  _ efficient generator... Humanity is literally drawing power from their own dead..." 

Suddenly, Ireul stood and called her assistant. "Amanda? Find a way to contact doctor Hayden. I've had a  _ breakthrough."  _

_ “I’ll send an email through, Doctor. Is this the kind of breakthrough that requires a champagne bottle, or the kind of breakthrough that requires a stiff drink for courage?” _ her ever so wonderfully sarcastic PA asked, the raised eyebrow coming through loud and clear despite being an audio only intercom.

"Depending on his answer, a stiff drink of either brain bleach or incandescent rage," Ireul grumbled. "We probably need an alternative to Argent. Damn it." 

_ “I’ll send over a bot with the strongest vodka in the base _ ,” Amanda drawled, cutting the connection a moment later and leaving Ireul to her thoughts, an alert popping up on her computer screen tracking the location of one of the hovering delivery drones that the UAC kept around its premises.

“‘Preciate it,” Ireul sighed to herself.

God... fucking damn it.

<>

**_“... I will admit, when I took the portal over to see what you wished to speak of, I was fully expecting something inappropriate. This is… however… quite a serious matter. You’re sure of these readings?”_ ** Doctor Hayden spoke, steam hissing from his vents as he stared down at the data on Ireul’s screen, consternation coloring his voice in contrast to his usual near monotone peppered by bits of slightly louder rage. 

For the first time since Ireul had known him, Doctor Hayden actually seemed to be  _ horrified _ by something. Probably the revelation that the Argent they were generating via the Demonic Crucible still on Mars was  _ made of human souls _ .

Actually, that wasn’t quite right.

It was made of  _ the tortured remnants of human souls combined with the very essence of Hell itself _ .

Much more horrifying when stated accurately, really.

“Yep,” Ireul groused. “In hindsight, we probably should have expected that. What  _ else _ would you get from Hell, morality?”

**_“... Doctor de la Valliere, I think it might be time to try and produce a Core capable of sustaining the Earth, now.”_ ** Doctor Hayden spoke solemnly, tapping his fingers against the table and letting his vents hiss and release heat as he tried to think of a better solution.  **_“As safe as we are from a Hell invasion now, I believe the UAC’s ethics committee will be…_ ** **_displeased_ ** **_if news of what exactly Argent Energy is leaks out to the public.”_ **

“That reminds me,” Ireul noted. “We’re actually  _ telling _ the Committee? Nice. I was ready to  _ actually _ hurt you if you planned to keep it secret from the people, you know.”

**_“Of course we’re telling the ethics committee. The UAC is an energy producing mega corporation, not soulless monsters,”_ ** Doctor Hayden paused, then tapped his fingers against the table with a loud hum.  **_“... there is a certain amount of irony in that statement, both considering the state of all other mega corporations active today, and in the fact that the both of us have faced literal soulless monsters from Hell.”_ **

“You know, I had forgotten the UAC was a soulless megacorporation,” Ireul mused. “Now I kind of want to  _ not _ tell them. What if they want us to keep mining the damned souls?”

**_“Then I will use my not inconsiderable influence to convince them otherwise. With the alternative of Core based energy generation on the table, despite my years of research into Argent Energy, we no longer have a requirement to continue utilizing it beyond what is necessary to facilitate the production of a true infinite energy generator,”_ ** Doctor Hayden responded, moving around to the other side of the table and pacing with his hands behind his back.

Ireul surreptitiously reached for the extra underwear she stashed in one of the lower drawers.

Steam hissed from the vents on the doctor’s back.  **_“_ ** **_Control_ ** **_yourself, doctor Valliere,”_ ** the robot grumbled.  **_“...This is making me uncomfortable.”_ **

“Look, I’m holding myself back from flirting with you already, I can’t exactly help my own body’s physiological response to your voice,” Ireul grumbled, standing up and shuffling behind the lab’s privacy screen to change her underwear. “If I  _ could _ I  _ would _ , but I kinda  _ can’t _ . I’m pretty sure it’s ingrained into my  _ soul  _ at this point, just as some kind of cruel joke by the world. Anyway, point is, the ethics committee will probably go along with having an  _ actual _ source of infinite energy instead of having to spend a shitload of money every year mining out Hell on Mars, especially since, y’know, with Core tech we don’t have to worry about torturing the damned souls of humanity any more than they already are.”

**_“Figures,”_ ** Doctor Hayden rumbled.  **_“How soon can you get working?”_ **

“Theoretically? Now. Realistically… Well, I’d need to move the modified Crucible back down here for convenience, which would honestly probably be way better for all of us since we technically don’t even need the Mars base anymore. But er- well, I still either need to figure out how to make a Core run without an implanted Soul, or we could go the shortcut route and implant an existing Soul into a modified Core specifically built to output energy in a manner compatible with the Earth’s energy grid.”

**_“The latter would probably not go over very well with the Ethics Committee,”_ ** Doctor Hayden drawled.

“No shit,” Ireul snarked. “I mean, unless we find a  _ particularly _ evil soul - hey, did we ever find Pierce? - then  _ maybe, _ but otherwise...”

**_“Doctor Olivia Pierce was driven insane by the sheer amount of Hell energy she was exposed to and was subsequently transmutated into a demonic arachnoid cyborg, which was, rather obviously, torn to shreds with extreme prejudice by the Doom Slayer,”_ ** Doctor Hayden spoke idly, tapping his fingers together behind his back and walking around the lab floor.  **_“Perhaps if we utilize the guilty souls of those on death row, the ethics committee would disagree less heavily. Unless, of course, there are_ ** **_animals_ ** **_we may use without consequence.”_ **

“Powered by the souls of puppies?” Ireul deadpanned. “I’m sure the  _ Ethics _ committee would be  _ all over _ that. No, we’d need something completely amoral. Something that probably doesn’t even  _ exist _ in this universe - it’d be a much easier task to just start work on a Soulless Core and hope for the best.”

Elsewhere in the multiverse, Matarael sneezed.

**_“... Do insects have souls?”_ ** Doctor Hayden deadpanned, sounding genuinely curious about the concept of ants or flies having actual souls.  **_“And if so, how many of them would be required to match the potency of a human soul?”_ **

Ireul had an odd look on her face. “...okay, one, that much soul would give them actual sentience. Two, I can actually honestly say that  _ the first spider _ is a member of my Family now, and that is a weird sentence.”

Doctor Hayden slowly turned to look at her.  **_“...excuse me?”_ **

“A few of my sisters are doing _ something _ with the Greek Gods,” Ireul muttered. “I’m not actually sure  _ what, _ but every once in a while I get a ping that there’s a new demigod or whatever in the Family, and I don’t want to know why there’s Echidna one day or Hephaistos another. Seriously.”

**_“I don’t know whether I should be amused or confused by the idea that you have actual Hellenistic Deities in your family. Regardless, if insects have souls and a large enough density of those souls can power a Core without achieving sentience in the process, then I believe that may be our most ethical solution. No one cares about a few hundred thousand mosquitos, after all.”_ ** Doctor Hayden nodded to himself, satisfied with his conclusion, then turned to Ireul with a glance that seemed a bit like he was waiting for her input.  **_“Can you do that, Doctor de la Valliere?”_ **

Ireul pondered that for a moment. “...tell you what, boss. You get me the aforementioned numbers of insects and I’ll... see what I can do. Okay?”

**_“Done.”_ ** Hayden spoke up after about five seconds of silence, his faceplate glowing brighter for a moment before he headed for the door.  **_“I’ve secured an order for approximately six hundred thousand honeybees. They aren’t mosquitos, but I’m certain they will do approximately the same job.”_ **

“Right,” Ireul sighed. “I’ll... get my math.”


	6. In Which Ireul Has Created An Abomination

“Well,” Ireul sighed once more, “this is horrifying.”

“... The fact that we’re shoveling a bunch of still living bees into what’s basically a metaphysical juicer, or the fact that it’s actually resulting in tangible soul energy that we can harvest?” Amanda asked dryly, covered head to toe in a thick hazmat suit as she scooped another handful of honeybees into the machine that Ireul had built over the last few weeks, grimacing as she dumped the smoke addled, docile insects into the hopper. 

“Look on the bright side,” Ireul deadpanned. “At least  _ you _ can’t hear their identities dissolving. ADAM fucking damn it, what a mess.”

“I’m not going to even pretend to know what that means,” Amanda deadpanned, continuing to shovel bees into the hopper and making sure the waste pulp of empty carcasses didn’t overflow and clog up the workings of the machine. “So I’m just gonna keep going until you’ve got enough soul juice to make your battery thing work.”

“I want to smack you for that terminology,” Ireul grumbled. “So. Very. Hard.”

“You say that every other day, boss.” Amanda continued with her perfect, sarcastic deadpan, completely unaffected by Ireul’s grumbling and threats. “Just tell me when. And also if we need more bees because we’re starting to get down to the bottom of the barrel.”

“In more ways than one,” Ireul sighed. “This is  _ still _ a stopgap solution at best. Bee souls aren’t exactly the most potent thing out there, but they still give me  _ time _ to figure shit out...”

“Well, if it puts out anywhere near as much energy as that Crucible Core you’ve got up on Mars right now, then it’s a pretty damn good stopgap all the same,” Amanda shrugged, not really at all concerned with the same things Ireul was given that she was really only there for a paycheck. “Didn’t you say that thing could run for like a billion years or something?”

“The Crucible Core has, without the same systems in place that an ideal Core has, has a maximum operational lifetime of about one point six five four nine three eight two two two three one nine years, yes. But this… half assed Bee Juice Core we’re putting together has a maximum lifetime of less than a million before I’d have to make a new one, and its output is like…” Ireul made a sort of wishy washy motion with her hand, grumbling as the output tank finally filled up and letting Amanda put the rest of the bees back into their container, letting the automatic drones put them back in their hives before disconnecting the output tank and taking it over to the other workstation, which was entirely taken up by an array of interconnected machines, each one mostly held together by a semi-autonomous branch of Ireul’s own nanite swarm.

“... Well. Suffice to say, the Crucible Core is only running at one percent capacity right now and it’s powering all of Earth with clean, free energy, but the BJC will only have less than  _ half _ the Crucible Core’s maximum energy output.” Ireul sighed, shaking her head and slotting the tank full of collected stabilized honeybee soul slurry into the array of machines on workstation 02, then activated said array and watched them hum to life and begin crystallizing the slurry into a proto-Core little by little, captured and concentrated within a bulky mechanical adapter that would let her slot it into an ever increasingly ridiculous series of adaptors that would terminate into the final plug to allow it a proper connection to the Earth’s main receiver terminal for the energy flow from Mars.

Well, once it was done crystallizing and she turned it on.

In a process that would probably take several days to complete due to the sheer inefficiency and low potency of insect souls.

Dammit.

“I can’t fucking believe I’m hijacking a source of energy with a homemade generator in the name of  _ clean energy, _ ” Ireul muttered. “It’s like something out of a hippie sci-fi novel.”

“To be fair, the alternative is literally ripping open a portal to Hell,” Amanda pointed out, crossing her arms as she stripped out of her hazmat suit and back into her almost criminally tight secretary uniform.

Ireul silently thanked her lucky stars that the UAC’s Earthbound Employee uniforms were so much thinner and so much more fashionable than the garbage scifi jumpsuits they all had to wear on Mars.

“Aren’t you supposed to ogle Doctor Hayden, boss?” Amanda snarked with a sly grin on her face.

Ireul rolled her eyes. “Just because I’ve decided on a dish doesn’t mean I don’t have  _ eyes, _ ” she snarked right back.

“Mm, fair enough,” Amanda laughed, then turned around and headed for the door. “Well, I’m going back to my desk, boss. Seeya around the break room. Try not to work too hard, eh?”

Ireul tched. "You're not my real mother," she grumbled. 

And then she was alone again.

Staring at a complicated array of beeping and blinking machines.

Listening to the inaudible buzzing screams of a hundred thousand bee souls processed into a gelatinous slurry.

“... How is this my life,” Ireul groaned, sinking to the ground and burying her face in her arms. “Uuuuuuuuuuggggghhhh- I’m supposed to be working on making Cores work better, not reengineering one to power the Earth!”

Groaning again, Ireul flopped herself onto her back, laying on the floor. Sighing, she pulled out her interuniversal phone and stared at it. "I should catch up with someone," she murmured to herself. "But who?" 

She contemplated the wide variety of choices she had for a moment, then sighed and dialed probably the only person who could actually help her with building a Core out of nothing but insect souls.

Lilith herself.

“... Hey Yuri, I’ve got a conundrum,” she immediately spoke up once the call connected. “I need to solve an energy crisis on this planet- I’ve already kind of done it, but I need something workable by normal humans, and I need it to run without a sapient soul.”

_ "Well, that sounds like a story,"  _ came an amused reply.  _ "Didn't you head off to refine  _ _ our _ _ Cores? I can't wait to hear what caused you to deal with this."  _

“Well I  _ was _ at first,” Ireul huffed, glaring at the holographic screen in front of her with more than a little irritation. “I  _ thought _ it was just a normal Earth where I could seclude myself for a while, but the dumb fucks managed to drop their entire planet into the worst energy crisis I’ve ever seen, and they thought the easiest way to fix that was to  _ mine literal Hell for energy.  _ So now I’m stuck making a Core capable of interfacing with the local tech so I can fix this energy crisis  _ without _ dropping the entire population of Earth into a global demonic invasion.”

_ "So why not keep using Hell Energy?"  _ Yuri asked.  _ "How bad could it- pfft, I can't finish that sentence with a straight face. What's it they're using, tortured souls?"  _

"Hit the nail on the head," Ireul groused. " _ Please  _ tell me that you have an idea for a soulless Core-generator." 

“ _ Unfortunately  _ no _ I don’t,”  _ Yuri groused, rolling her eyes and flipping her hand around.  _ “Cores are built to run on Souls and without a guiding Soul, the Core’s internal generator algorithms won’t be able to start. Lemme see what you’re working on right now, though. I might be able to give you some advice.” _

Ireul groaned, thumbing the comm to data transfer mode and queuing an upload. “I’ve been using  _ bees, _ ” she complained. “Bees! Of all things!”

_ “Yikes _ . _ That’s pretty bad. But to be fair, you didn’t exactly have the right files to figure out how to make that work,” _ Yuri muttered, checking over what Ireul had done so far and clicking her tongue.  _ “Well, the work is sound, but there’s a few improvements that could be made… try doing a recursive design- Cores within Cores within Cores. That way you only need one insect soul to power a successively larger series of generators capable of drawing ever more power from the quantum field.” _

“I  _ tried _ nested Cores,” Ireul grumbled, queuing another file. “This is what happened.”

Yuri raised an eyebrow at the sight of a laboratory covered in black soot.  _ “I think you did something wrong,” _ she noted.

“No shit,” Ireul agreed. “Any other bright ideas?”

_ “Well, try properly using a schematic for nested cores,” _ Yuri stated, sending over a few files back to Ireul and sighing. _ “Try setting up a cascade loop with a limited output failsafe so in the case of extreme energy production it just shunts it all back into quantum space to produce more energy without blowing things up in lower dimensions. And then nest it in successively larger and less efficient generators to bleed off any initial burst before making the final layer into your adapter key with the final generator layer.” _

Ireul sighed. “Fine, fine, I’ll try. Hey, while we’re at it, where the FUCK does everyone else keep pulling all those ready-made Cores from? I keep having to  _ engineer _ mine from  _ scratch! _ ”

_ “Have you been downloading all the update patches lately? Perhaps you missed it- the Core replicator algorithms should be somewhere in there already.” _ Yuri pointed out, shrugging a bit at Ireul’s confusion.  _ “Unless you haven’t reconfigured your Core hardware recently, in which case you’re going to need to run a restart cycle for that.” _

“...I knew I forgot something,” Ireul muttered. “But really,  _ how many _ updates could there possibly be- what the fuck is all that.”

_ “Well, considering you left right before Leliel went on vacation…” _ Yuri counted on her fingers idly, shrugging after going past ten and looking at the screen wryly.  _ “Well over thirty new members of the family, all of whom provided new and valuable data to the network including the ability to spawn blank Cores in at will- though, that one was a patch that came  _ before _ you left… so I guess you’ve just been really bad at updating.” _

"Have... Has everyone been literally adopting people left and right!?" Ireul demanded, poring over the patch notes. "I mean I noticed the  _ Greek gods,  _ but I assumed that was just Shamshel being niche, so... What the Hell is all this!?" 

_ “Actually, the Greeks were all Gaghiel and Leliel’s fault. Shamshel hasn’t even left Halkeginia- Or Shammi, for that matter. But yeah, it’s… multidimensional alien computer clusters, literal gods and goddesses, a few magical girls most recently, some mages, some soul-manipulating monster hunters, a robot, and also a magical horse with tits,” _ Yuri summed up idly, rolling her eyes at Ireul’s confusion.  _ “Anyway, with how many updates you’ve got to go through, I can only imagine that you haven’t even installed that minor patch that lets you just auto update every time you sleep. So. You might wanna get on that. And with how much data there is… you’re gonna be asleep for a few  _ days _.” _

"I'll have to let my assistant know," Ireul muttered. "So uh... How  _ is  _ Halkeginia doing?" 

_ “Fine enough. Shamshel is going stir crazy- or maybe just regular crazy. She’s been complaining about constantly getting booty calls from gross slimy eldritch horrors living in rural America back in the 1920s,” _ Yuri snorted and sighed, flicking her fingers idly and wiggling them for emphasis.  _ “Y’know, of the distinctly Lovecraftian sort. All slimy and gross when you look at them in only three dimensions in a single direction of one time axis, vaguely alright looking if you observe them from higher dimensions, you know how it goes. Uhh… oh, Zeruel and Zeru left on their vacations too- something about finding new ways of gaining infinite power. And uhhh… yeah other than that everything’s been pretty quiet. Well, other than the Yuis trying to figure out a solution to Angelic sexual sterility… which they’d rather no one know about but they always forget that I am literally connected to everyone’s souls so- whatever.” _

"Have they tried artificial uteri?" Ireul questioned. "Or- no, don't tell me, it's a pregnancy kink or something, isn't it?" 

_ “I really don’t know and I honestly don’t care, I don’t want kids anyway,” _ Yuri huffed, crossing her arms and frowning.  _ “Anyway, if that’s everything, I’m pretty sure you have everything you need to actually make your Core thing work. Do you need anything else?” _

"No, I think I'm done," Ireul decided. "Seeya, Yuri!”

With that, Ireul hung up and stretched her arms out, sighing as she paged her assistant again and dragged out the futon from the back corner of the lab. “Amanda, cancel all my meetings for the next… let’s say three days or so? I’m locking the doors to my labs and I’m gonna do something that’s probably gonna conk me out for the next couple days. If I’m not awake after three days, just keep pushing stuff back because there’s no way in hell I’m gonna wake up with what I’m about to do.”

_ "Noted, boss,"  _ came a dry reply.  _ "Do you want me to set up a cold shower for you?"  _

“For once, it’s actually not me being horny,” Ireul sighed, then cut the feed, laid down in her cot, locked the lab doors, turned the lights off and-

“Begin Update Process.”


	7. In Which Ireul Finally Clocks out of Work

“Oh jesus christ in the seven heavens my  _ head _ ,” Ireul groaned as she woke up, mouth as dry as the sahara desert and eyes crusted over with the gunk of seventy two hours of straight unconsciousness. “My lips… my neck... my  _ back _ .”

She dragged herself off the cot, groaning lowly. "I should have laid down somewhere softer...  _ ADAM,  _ what a pain..." 

Dragging herself upright, she paged her assistant. "Amanda, I'm up. You there? Did I miss anything?" 

_ “Other than the twelve meetings you were supposed to have with some of the less important people in the department, not really.”  _ Amanda answered, still full of snark and sass as always.  _ “Hayden called by the way, said something about anomalous readings from the sensors that still worked down in Hell.” _

“I’ll take a look later,” Ireul groaned. “Right now, I need a shower, but let the boss know I’m back awake again, would you?”

_ “Of course, boss. I’ve sent you your updated schedule for the next few days. Had to shuffle around a lot of meetings so you’re gonna be back to back for a while. Good luck.” _

“I make my own luck,” Ireul muttered, heading off into the shower.

Ten minutes later, feeling somewhat cleaner if still a little damp, she finished buttoning her labcoat and poured herself a  _ large _ cup of coffee.

“Right,” she declared. “What  _ have _ I accomplished?”

As she checked her new Network connection, she idly made note of the several hundred patches and updates now present in her Core, including all of Uriel’s myriad patches, which were  _ especially _ fascinating considering they gave her an  _ incredibly _ good start into her actual mission now that she didn’t have to work solely off of her pre-existing knowledge.

_ “The Bee Juice Core is now running at full capacity, by the way,”  _ Amanda remarked over the intercom.  _ “In case you were wondering, boss.” _

“I still hate that term but sure, great, thanks for telling me,” Ireul sighed, plonking down into her desk chair and groaning. “How’s the output looking? Is it working anywhere near as well as the Crucible Core?”

_ "It's... working,"  _ Amanda hedged.  _ "Okay, the numbers tell me that the output is about eighteen percent that of the Crucible Core. Also, Hayden is calling."  _

“... Eighteen percent, huh? Lower than I’d like but it’s to be expected with such a garbage method,” Ireul sighed, then shook her head. “Patch him through, I guess. What’s he calling about anyway?”

_ “Still the same anomaly, boss,” _ came the reply.  _ “Patching him through.” _

**_“Doctor de la Valliere,”_ ** came the voice of  _ her _ boss.  **_“Glad to see you back on your feet again. Could you take a look at this for me? It feels like something right up your alley.”_ **

“Of course, boss- what were those anomalous readings you were picking up anyway?” Ireul asked, watching as her screen filled with various sensor readings from the data Hayden had picked up, chewing her lip as she saw various energy spikes that were… strange, considering the usual background radiation of Hell. “Oh. Oh that  _ is _ weird…”

**_“Indeed,”_ ** came the rumble.  **_“I probably would not have contacted you otherwise. Is there anything you think it might be?”_ **

“Honestly, it could be any number of things- new developments in Hell technology to kill the Slayer, the actual Doom Slayer, some random storm- I mean seriously, at this point it might even be my  _ family _ screwing around in there for some reason,” Ireul sighed, poring over the readings and grumbling. “I don’t suppose you managed to get any video footage out of those sensors before they shut down from the interference?”

**_“Some, but the data is garbled,”_ ** Doctor Hayden grumbled.  **_“I am forwarding you the data right now.”_ **

“Every little bit helps- I might be able to get something out of it anyway,” Ireul responded, tapping her fingers as the video files downloaded and began playing automatically. She watched as the glitchy, static filled mess resolved into a clearer picture for a few frames, letting bits of her Angelic nature spill out and stabilize the footage until she could see clearly…

“.... That’s motherfucking  _ Zeus _ ,” Ireul gaped, jaw hanging wide open in sheer disbelief. “Why the  _ fuck _ is Zeus in hell?”

She scratched her chin. “Is this actually Tartarus? Or wait, him being here is a  _ new _ development if I’m reading this correctly... Okay, this is official. I have no idea what’s going on here.”

**_“Wonderful. Regardless, I suppose we can only call it a blessing that the demonic population of Hell is not currently plotting to re-take our universe at the moment,”_ ** Hayden drawled, the miniature image of his head on screen shaking a bit as he turned away from the camera.

“Noted,” Ireul noted. “Good news is, I finally finished installing all the patches to my Soul, so now I think I can come up with a better generator than the abomination downstairs, at the very least.”

**_“I still find it fascinating that you can download and install updates to your very Soul so casually,”_ ** Hayden mentioned idly, tapping his fingers together and leaning forward.  **_“Perhaps once this energy crisis is resolved once and for all, I might be able to study such a phenomenon up close.”_ **

“Why,  _ Doc~tor! _ ” Ireul purred. “If you wanted to  _ study _ me on a level  _ that _ intimate, all you needed to do was  _ ask~! _ ”

**_“Why do I even bother,”_ ** Hayden groaned, steam hissing from his vents and filling the call with staticy crackles before he hung up without another word.

“Tease,” Ireul grumbled.

<>

“And that goes there, this goes here, blah blah blah, can’t  _ believe _ I spent so long without updating, christ on a  _ stick _ ,” Ireul muttered to herself as she began the final touches on the fifth nested core, taking the initial generator’s size from “a marble just big enough to encapsulate a single honeybee” to “an orb about the size of a regulation volleyball, but smooth”.

Checking the projected output, she made a face. "Still 50% of Crucible? Come the fuck  _ on! _ How many layers does this thing  _ need?"  _

Ireul groaned, collapsing into her chair as she dropped the Core down onto her workbench, pushing herself away with a long suffering sigh. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckkkkkk. Even now, there’s still so much wooooooork. I just wanna do my own projects dammit!”

She leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. “...I need a distraction.”

“Amandaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” Ireul immediately shouted as she exited her lab for the first time in what had to be several weeks, stretching out her shoulders and ditching her lab coat for something more fashionable and sci fi to match the rest of the population. “I’m going out! I’ve been cooped up here for  _ ages _ and I need something to do!”

“So  _ this _ is what you look like, boss,” her assistant snarked. “I’d almost forgotten.”

“Yeah yeah don’t gimme that shit, I know I’m a shut-in workaholic, I’m fixing that,” Ireul grumbled, swiping her badge against the door and clocking out after- “Fucking christ, I cannot  _ believe _ I’ve technically logged over six hundred hours of work time.”

She groaned. “...no time to agonize over that. Onwards!”

With that, Ireul immediately flounced off into the massive city that was the massively overbuilt and futuristic Houston, Texas, intent on doing… something. Maybe watch a movie or something. Or get laid. 

Unfortunately, future Houston wasn’t exactly that much more interesting than a normal Houston, in that it was unmistakably Texas, and therefore American.

Thankfully, it was a lot less full of racist rednecks here in the future.

Unfortunately, given the spread of megacorporations and rampant capitalism, that also meant that there was also literally a combined Starbucks and McDonald’s on what could be described with only mild hyperbole as nearly every street corner.

“Right,” Ireul decided. “I need... a nightclub. I think.”

And so she walked.

And walked.

Aaaand walked some more.

Aaaand-

“Okay I swear there was a nightclub around here when I first landed, where the hell did it go?” Ireul grumbled, finally pulling out her phone and actually pulling up a map of the area. “... Oh, it’s three blocks over. Dammit.”

Well, she did have feet. And the means of using them for walking.

Didn’t mean she had to like it.

It was fucking  _ hot _ .

Eugh.

“Hm… place is more packed than I thought it’d be,” Ireul muttered to herself as she rounded the corner, taking in the line stretching outside of the club and furrowing her brow as she idly chewed on her thumb. “Which means I either need to use my authority as part of the UAC to get in on Hayden’s dime… or… I could sneak in.”

She considered her options. “...I can probably mooch off Hayden when I wrestle an actual date out of him... operation sneak in it is!”

With exaggerated motions, Ireul slunk into the shadows and let some of her Angelic nature slip free, becoming all but invisible to the rest of the world as she slipped through space on strange axes before idly stealing the little UV stamp from the doorman and stamping the back of her hand, then just walking into the club and over to a slightly more secluded area before depositing herself back into realspace.

“Aaand done,” Ireul nodded to herself smugly.

“What’s done, and how did you do that?” somebody asked behind her.

“Whoa shit!” Ireul immediately yelped and spun around, looking at the random person who had apparently blended with the shadows behind her. From what she could see, the lady was… built. And tall. And wearing an all black, skimpy ensemble that, despite her clear military background (all those tattoos and the dog tags strung around her wrist were quite telling) made her look more like a goth stripper than a marine. “How long have you been sitting there!?”

“The whole time,” the woman deadpanned, rolling her eyes and taking a sip of her drink, her dog tags flashing in the light and revealing her name- Joan Dark. How fitting.

“...you saw nothing,” Ireul declared imperiously. “Whatever you think I might have done.”

“Uh huh. Sure.” Joan rolled her eyes again with a heavy, disbelieving frown. “Hey, haven’t I seen you around before? You work down at the UAC Facility down on Ninth, right?”

“So you’re posted around there,” Ireul deduced. “...What?” she defended herself when Joan raised her eyebrows. “This is literally my first time out of the lab in months and you recognized me on sight!”

“Well, that, and there’s posters of you that say to ignore the weird shit happening in your lab posted all over the complex,” Joan deadpanned. “But y’know, nothing serious.”

Ireul paused. “...is that a direct quote? Because if so, holy shit Hayden actually has a sense of humor... I gotta keep that in mind...”

“No that was your secretary’s work,” Joan deadpanned, then sighed. “Whatever. Sit down I guess. Sam n’ Ellen are gonna be here any minute now. Might as well introduce you all.”

“Dammit, Amanda,” Ireul deadpanned. “So, do I know those Sams and Ellens, or are they just going to go ‘hey it’s that chick from the weird shit poster’ like you did?”

“Oh shit it’s my boss-” came a semi-familiar voice from behind Ireul, causing her to turn around and see…

Someone she barely recognized as working in the same section of the building as her. 

“.... You’re uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Ireul trailed off, holding up a finger and staring at the woman, who was holding a pair of drinks and slowly turning pale. “.... Dammit, I swear I’ve seen you before- what’s your department again?”

“... Supernatural and metaphysical genetics,” the other woman responded dryly, setting down the drinks as she realized that Ireul was here on personal interest rather than official business. “We’ve had meetings together.”

“Oh yeah, now I remember- Grimm, right? Samantha Grimm?” Ireul asked, then pointed at the other woman, who practically defined the butch lesbian look to the point that Ireul almost had to physically force herself to look at the woman’s face instead of her ripped biceps and tight tube top. “And that makes you… Ellen, right?”

“Weren’t you the one pining for the robot?” Ellen deadpanned, crossing her arms. “Didn’t think I was on your menu.”

“I can be a robosexual and a lesbian at the same time,” Ireul huffed, pouting a bit. “Anyway- sorry to barge in on your girls’ night like this, but I figure I might as well try to make more friends than my hot secretary.”

“Riiight,” Joan drawled. “Out of curiosity, what exactly  _ is _ that weird shit going on in your labs? If you’re allowed to tell us, that is.”

“Well most of it’s classified but basically I solved the world’s energy crisis using nothing but a bucket of bees,” Ireul deadpanned, taking in the disbelieving looks from everyone else. “What? It’s true. Sort of. It’s an oversimplification.”

“... That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard since the guy who ran orientation at Weyland Yutani told us,” Ellen started, puffing out her chest and doing some kind of mocking impression of what Ireul could only assume was some generic nobody pencil pusher,  _ “We here at Weyland Yutani care about your well being!” _

“I have to admit, even working near your lab, boss… that doesn’t sound uh… viable,” Samantha winced a bit, trying to figure out just how the fuck Ireul managed to do the things she claimed.

“The actual explanation is classified,” Ireul clarified, allowing herself to grin, “but the bucket of bees part is in fact 100% true! Even though it was a plan B. I’m not allowed to say why it needed a plan B, though, Hayden says it’d cause a global panic/outrage and I kind of agree...”

“... That’s dumb but I guess if it works I can’t argue with that,” Joan deadpanned, slugging back her drink as if it were her last drink of her life. “Anyway, we’re here to have a good time and get drunk, not talk about work- so let’s have fun!”

“...I might have forgotten how to do that,” Ireul confessed.

“That’s… the literal saddest thing I’ve heard in a while,” Ellen muttered, staring at Ireul with some mix of pity and disbelief. “What, are you just  _ that _ much of a workaholic?”

"Hey, it's not  _ my  _ fault I've been busy!" Ireul complained, crossing her arms and sulking. "First there was the project I took on myself, then there was the entire disaster on Mars, then I had to scramble to find an alternative energy source, then I was building the bee generator..." 

“Still kind of in disbelief that you actually managed to do that,” Samantha deadpanned.

“It works and I made it using bees, that’s literally all I can say about it,” Ireul responded dryly. “But yeah, it’s basically just been nonstop asswhipping the entire last few months or so. “Didn’t even get vacation days while I was on Mars…”

“You poor thing,” Ellen commiserated. “You clearly need a sufficiently fruity drink to start us off, and we’ll go from there...”

  
“That sounds like a  _ wonderful _ idea,” Ireul grinned and slapped her hand down on the table as she stood up. “Hit me up ladies, I wanna get  _ DRUNK!” _


	8. In Which There's Hangover And Tempting Fate

“Oh jesus christ in the seven heavens my  _ head _ ,” Ireul groaned as she woke up, mouth as dry as the sahara desert and eyes crusted over with the gunk of seven hours of straight drunk unconsciousness. “My lips… my neck... my  _ back _ .”

“Oh god, what happened last night?” someone groaned from next to her. “Wait, do I have a bedmate-  _ oh god did I just sleep with my boss? _ ”

“Oh jesus fuck what  _ time _ is it?” another voice groaned, probably the owner of the very muscular bicep wrapped around Ireul’s neck. “God  _ damn _ what did I do last night…?”

“The three of you got sloppy drunk and passed out on my goddamn couch is what you did,” the fourth voice answered, revealing Joan in all her glory already dressed in a semi-military uniform, holding a tray containing several bowls of cereal and hangover cures. 

“At least I learned I can’t handle my alcohol nearly as well as I think,” Ireul groaned. “Ow.”

“I feel like I remember  _ something _ weird happening…” Samantha grumbled, slowly sitting up and taking stock of the situation, breathing a sigh of relief when she noted that everyone’s clothes were still on and there weren’t any weird sticky messes outside of the drool staining her cheek. 

Ellen just rubbed her forehead, shaking her head slowly as she untangled herself from Ireul and stood up with all the care and gingerness of a newborn foal- which is to say, she immediately fell over and barely caught herself on the back of the couch. “I had. The  _ worst _ nightmare.”

“What was it,” Samantha groaned, ambling herself vaguely upwards and snagging a hangover cure. “Ow,” she added.

“I don’t remember a lot, but I’m pretty sure it was about me being stuck on a ship with a murderous alien thing- or it might have been some kinda sex monster, I don’t know,” Ellen grumbled, retrieving her own bottle of hangover cure and chugging it down like a woman possessed. “It fucking  _ sucked _ .”

“At this point, I’d actually  _ take _ a sex monster,” Ireul groaned, clutching her head and making the final bottle of hangover cure zoom into her hand. “God I need to get laid.”

“ _ That _ much was clear,” Joan deadpanned, rolling her eyes as she set the tray down onto her tiny dining table. “What with how handsy you were getting near the end last night.”

“I was?” Ireul asked.

“The fuck was that?” Ellen asked at almost the same moment. “Was that... telekinesis?”

Ireul paused, then stared down at the bottle in her hand, then back at the other three women in the apartment, then back at her hand, then back at the-

“... You’re probably still hungover,” Ireul deflected, then awkwardly sat down for cereal and pointedly said nothing more.

“... With how much weird shit goes on in the Argent research labs, I’m honestly not even surprised anymore,” Samantha sighed, pretending she hadn’t just seen Ireul violate the laws of physics and grabbing her own bowl. “ _ Fuck _ me, my back hurts.”

“You mean the bee labs,” Joan sniped. “And of course it hurts, look where you fell asleep...”

“If you’re offering,” Ireul immediately piped in, barely even registering her words as she shoveled bland cereal into her maw to offset the pounding headache in her skull.

“Wh- I  _ just _ said I didn’t want to fuck my boss!” Samantha squeaked, choosing to slurp down her own bowl without elaborating further. 

“.... So if she  _ wasn’t _ your boss…” Ellen muttered, munching on her own cereal with a dry expression on her face.

" _ Hush!"  _ Samantha yelped. 

"I am pretty fuckable," Ireul agreed. "I wouldn't blame you for becoming overcome with lust." 

“Yeah yeah, girls you’re all pretty-” Joan cut in, raising her voice slightly. “But it’s also already one in the afternoon and I have shit I wanna do today before dark so you all gotta get the hell out of my apartment.”

All three groaned.

<>

“What the hell do I do alone on a Sunday afternoon?” Ireul muttered to herself as she walked down the street, grumbling slightly as the sweltering heat bore down on her and made the air feel muggy and awful. “And I wonder if I can get laid…”

She stopped at the nearest shade to just fan herself for a bit. “Why did I have to transfer to  _ Texas _ of all places...”

Ireul huffed again as she sat down on a conveniently located bench, fanning herself a bit more and pondering the merits of just using her goddamn AT Field for the first time in what felt like years to cool herself down.

Well, first time in years barring all the other times she’d used it for work related bumfuckery. And a few petty instances of telekinesis because she couldn’t be assed to get up and walk a few feet.

“Booooored,” she groaned. “So booored.” 

“... Hey, sorry if this is weird but you’re uh- what was it, Doctor Valliere, right?” a voice asked, low and gravelly and masculine in all the ways that presumably lots of people went absolutely nuts over, as a shadow cast over Ireul and blocked out the sweltering heat of the sun for a few moments. 

Ireul squinted up. “...Who’s asking?”

“Corporal John Grimm, ma’am,” the man answered, saluting idly at Ireul, who sat up once she realized the guy was definitely a face she remembered… well, vaguely.

“... Didn’t I see you on Mars…?” Ireul asked, tilting her head and squinting at the rugged features of the man before her, taking in his light security fatigues and the pistol holstered at his waist. “... And has anyone ever told you that you look  _ exactly _ like an early 2000s Karl Urban?”

“It’s... come up, ma’am,” Grimm confessed. Wait. Hadn’t-

“...Any relation to that cute geneticist working for me?” Ireul questioned.

“That’s my sister, yeah,” Grimm nodded, then awkwardly sat next to Ireul. “I um- I was just cleared for active security detail again, and I thought I’d ask, since we both survived Mars- did you… did you happen to see…  _ him?” _

“Him who?” Ireul asked.

“Him!” Grimm spoke almost fervently, a near religious light cast across his expression as he began speaking faster. “That crazy bastard in the green power armor- the guy smashing demons left and right like he was some kinda unstoppable terminator! The- the  **DOOM SLAYER** !”

“How in the sweet diddly fuck did you manage to allcaps and bold that with your mouth,” Ireul muttered, blinking in confusion for a second or two before shaking her head. “And yeah, I saw him. Picked me up and ran through the base without even slowing down. Gotta admit, I might be a lesbian but  _ shit _ that was… well.”

“You are  _ so _ lucky, ma’am,” Grimm spoke reverently, and was that a bit of jealousy in there?

“Riiiiight,” Ireul drawled.

Grimm shook his head and cleared his throat awkwardly, looking for all the world like some kind of socially awkward pitbull as he held out his hand to Ireul. “Er, sorry about that- I just… I admire him, y’know? I wanna be like him- a demon killing badass that never slows down no matter how stacked the odds are!”

“Well,” Ireul grumbled, “just for that, I’m hoping you’ll never get to be one.”

“Harsh,” Grimm winced, retracting his hand and sighing. “Well, I guess that’s pretty much it- nice meeting another survivor, I guess. Seeya around.”

With that, he stood, waved awkwardly, and walked away.

Ireul rolled her eyes, before blinking. “...Why do I feel like some cogs of destiny just started turning?”

“Because they did,” Tabris deadpanned, walking into frame and then out of frame without ever breaking his stride, not even bothering to give Ireul a second glance now that his job of moving the plot along was done. “Anyway, bye. 

<>.”

“Bitch.” Ireul deadpanned, glaring at nothing in particular as she walked back into her office on Monday, wearing something decidedly less insulating considering the godawful heatwave happening that week. “Fucking Texas. Fucking goddamn Tabris. Fucking goddamn- oh hey Samantha, you’re… early.”

“.... It’s noon,” Samantha deadpanned.

“... Perks of being head researcher, I guess,” Ireul responded nonchalantly. “Hey, has anything weird happened recently? My brother showed up earlier and I’m paranoid.”

“It’s been really quiet all day, actually- well, Jenna finally came back after her mourning leave,” Samantha mentioned, making a vague wave towards the depths of the facility. “So that’s nice, I guess. She’s still not doing great, though…y’know, considering her husband died on Mars.”

“Right, the people on Mars had families...” Ireul nodded. “Aight. I’ll be in my lab. Call Amanda if you need anything, I wanna tinker...”

“Sure thing,” Samantha nodded, then turned around and walked to the lifts to head back to her own office. “Seeya around, boss.”

“Seeya,” Ireul mumbled, turning about face and  _ actually _ heading for her lab, brow furrowed. “...God damn it, Tabris.”

Still, despite everything, nothing really happened on her way to the lab- other than Ireul idly flirting with Amanda again, but nothing actually special.

It was starting to annoy her a little.

“Could whatever wants to happen  _ happen _ already?” she muttered. “I’m getting antsy.”

And of course, how could the Universe refuse such an easy target?


	9. In Which Hell Invades, Again

“Seriously!? Again!?” Ireul screeched as, once again, the UAC proved itself to be full of demon worshipping satanists who took Ireul’s progress in clean, free, infinite energy as some kind of insult and had instead managed to not only broker some kind of deal with Hell to destroy her generator, but also replace it with Argent  _ again _ , and then overrun the Earth en masse.

Fucking  _ wonderful. _

“This is what I get for wanting something to happen,” she growled, shut deep in her lab, and tinkering up a suitable weapon. It was taking  _ time, _ and she was  _ annoyed. _

“Doctor! Doctor! Are you in there!?” a voice shouted from the other side of the door as a fist pounded against the sealed and reinforced barrier- Samantha, sounding very, very worried. “Please! Open the door! Everywhere else is overrun by zombies and John and Joan are hurt! Please!”

“Sam?” Ireul immediately jerked up, rushing over to the door and checking the security cameras and- dammit, right, with the building on emergency lockdown all the power was being diverted to sealing off the origin of the dimensional breach instead of letting the goddamn cameras work.  _ Fuck _ . “Is that you?”

“No, it’s the fishmonger-  _ yes it’s me, please let me in! _ ” came a hurried answer.

“... Who the  _ fuck _ uses the word fishmonger in the twenty second century?” Ireul muttered to herself as she opened the door, allowing Joan, John, Samantha, and Jenna to all spill into the lab in a heap right before the door sealed shut behind them once again. “And how, of all people, are you four the only survivors?”

“Because John’s an overprotective weirdo, Joan’s a badass, and Jenna and I were the only two people in the shielded rooms when the Hell Wave hit,” Samantha groaned, slowly picking herself up while Joan just rolled over, high fived John, and pitifully crawled over to the medkit mounted on the wall.

“... You uh… need some help there? Either of you?” Ireul asked.

“HE wouldn’t need help!” John declared fervently. “And so won’t I!”

“Tell me that again when you’re not bleeding out from a fucking claw wound,” Joan grumbled, immediately dragging John up and ripping his tactical vest and shirt off so she could stitch up the massive gash running down his back- courtesy of a very angry imp three hallways away. “So stop pretending to be a badass before it gets you killed,  _ Corporal _ .”

“How the fuck is he even alive?” Ireul asked in bemusement. “I’d have expected somebody to kill him by now...”

“...You mean some _ thing, _ ” Samantha corrected, frowning.

Ireul stared blankly. “You heard me.”

“.... Yeah,” Samantha finally acquiesced after a moment, thumping John on his good shoulder and pushing him into one of the few rolling chairs that passed for seating in Ireul’s lab. “Good going dumbass, you nearly killed yourself cuz you couldn’t stop yourself from trying to be a hero.”

“I had it under control!” John protested, whining a little bit even as he winced and tried very hard to stop bleeding through sheer force of will. 

“Was that before or  _ after _ you got clawed in the back by an imp that  _ I  _ had to handle?” Joan deadpanned. “Next time don’t charge into a melee battle with a bunch of demons with only a fucking combat knife- or better yet, don’t make it a next time.”

Rolling her eyes, Ireul stalked over to the nearest drawer and pulled it open. “Right. I’m gonna make you lot some gear. Stay there, and don’t touch  _ anything. _ ”

“.... Y’know, sometimes I wonder how exactly she’s allowed to do anything she wants, but then I remember that she took less than a year to singlehandedly break the laws of thermodynamics and generate literal infinite energy,” Samantha deadpanned, watching Ireul work with something akin to awe in her expression. “... that, and she’s a workaholic pulling ridiculous amounts of overtime.”

“I heard that!” the woman yelled. “And I resemble that remark!”

“... Can you just hurry up with that gear and let’s  _ go _ already? We need to fucking  _ move _ before we’re completely overrun here!” Joan shouted back, unslinging a battered rifle from her back and pressing her ear to the door, wincing at the shrieks and howls that were looming ever closer. “We have incoming demons, and I doubt this door’s gonna hold long!”

“Yes it will,” Ireul shot back, walking past it and reaching up to grab something from the shelf. “After I lost my lab last time, I took precautions. The door is going nowhere. Nor are the walls, for that matter. Now hush and let me work.”

“.... I hope for all our sakes that you’re  _ right _ ,” Joan muttered, sighing as she took a few steps back from the door and looking over at Ireul. “What the hell are you making, anyway?”

“Gear,” Ireul deadpanned. “Something that can eviscerate any demon it touches, something to keep you squishy people  _ alive, _ stuff like that. I’d prefer a ranged variant,” she added, hefting what looked like a sword hilt, “but it doesn’t want to do that.”

“... Please tell me you made a lightsaber,” Samantha breathed out quietly, making grabby motions towards the sword hilt. “Please please please please-

“It’s not a lightsaber,” Ireul deadpanned, then flicked a hidden switch on the sword hilt that activated the device and-

“Holy shit, it’s a goddamn laser buster sword,” Joan breathed out, taking in the gigantic slab of sizzling blue energy that had formed from the hilt. She paused, then looked around at everyone else. “... What, I’m not allowed to like Final Fantasy?”

“... I didn’t know you were a gamer…” Samantha muttered, then coughed into her hand and looked back at Ireul. “So um… is there more than one of those or…?”

“In a moment,” Ireul snapped.  _ “Chill. _ I’m working on that. _ ” _

“How am I supposed to be  _ chill _ !? There’s demons trying to murder us outside!” Samantha snapped back, pointing at the door, which was now shuddering as the demons began slamming against it. “They’re already outside the door!”

Scowling, Ireul grabbed the nearest item and threw it at the wall, where it hit a big red button. “And I  _ said _ it would  _ hold, _ ” she hissed, as the shuddering ceased altogether and a loud  _ squelching _ noise, following a low rumble, began to emanate from there. “Now  _ chill. _ I’m still  _ working. _ ”

“.... Y’know, somehow I’m not surprised in the least that you booby trapped the hallway,” Joan muttered, sitting back down irritably and sighing. “This is fucking insane. This is just- so fucking insane. How is this my  _ life _ .”

“You got some kind of Protagonist Syndrome,” Ireul replied distractedly. “Persevere.”

“Tch, if anyone’s got that it’s John,” Samantha deadpanned, slapping her brother on his good shoulder and drawing a startled yelp from the somewhat delirious man. “Wake up you lug, we gotta go soon and I’m  _ not _ dragging your dead weight through the halls  _ again.” _

“I’m up, I’m up,” John groaned, slowly sitting up and wincing at the new stitches in his back. “Ugh, damn, starting to think the painkillers are wearing off…  _ shit _ that hurts.”

“Don’t irritate your stitches,” Ireul advised from her desk. “Hey, in case I don’t manage to figure out a ranged weapon by the time we run out of food, would you rather have an axe or a lance?”

“Axe,” John answered, rolling his one good shoulder as he stood up and pulled the remains of his shirt back on. “Lances ain’t good with only one working arm. Axes are fine, ‘s long as you can lift the damn things.”

Letting out a ‘tch’ sound, Ireul tossed over a long handle. “Familiarize yourself with it,” she snapped. “If you cut any of your limbs off, I won’t be resurrecting you.”

“...Can you even do that?” Samantha asked.

“No,” the woman allowed, “but I have some strings to pull. Now will you please let me  _ work? _ ”

“Fine, but I’d rather not sit still the whole time- how long is it going to take anywa-” Joan cut herself off as alarms sounded throughout the base, the shrill sounds of demons crying out echoing through the halls… along with the sound of gunshots.

And explosions.

“... Who the f-” Joan muttered, glancing at the door slowly. “Did they send reinforcements?”

Ireul  _ swore, _ clacking at a keyboard and bringing up the feeds. “I swear, not a  _ moment _ here with you,” she snarled. “Who’s- oh hey, John, your Sempai is here.”

“My wha-?” John asked, stumbling over to Ireul’s screen before gasping. “It’s him! It’s the Slayer! He’s here to rescue us!”

“So it seems,” Ireul sighed, pretending not to see everyone else visibly sagging in relief at the mention of the Slayer’s name. “Great. Can’t wait to get manhandled by a giant green man again. Wonderful.”

“Not a fan?” Joan questioned.

“Not in the slightest,” Ireul growled. “I feel like his preferred method of treating tech is smash and grab, which is even worse...”

As if to prove her point, the Slayer proceeded to enter the room in the most dramatic fashion possible:

Punching through the door and prying it open with his bare (armored) hands.

As the Slayer entered, the door wheezed open on its own, shuddering into its locks while giving everyone an  _ excellent _ view of the carnage beyond- what seemed like an endless river of demon corpses, guts, and blood, mixed in with burn marks on the walls and bullet holes absolutely everywhere.

“.... See what I mean?” Ireul deadpanned, waving in the Slayer’s direction.

“...Yes, he could have knocked,” Joan agreed weakly.

Without a word said, the Slayer didn’t so much as  _ walk _ over to the hastily assembled group, but rather  _ loomed _ , looking at each of them in turn before a familiar,  _ extremely welcome _ voice emanated from the Slayer’s helmet.

_ “Greetings, Doctor de la Valliere. I would congratulate you on your accomplishments, but that may have to wait. The Slayer is here to rescue the four of you.” _

“.... VEGA…?” Ireul whispered, stepping a little closer with wide eyes. “You’re- well, I guess I can’t say  _ alive _ , but- holy shit, the Slayer made a backup of you?”

_ “Indeed. However, the facility is still under attack. We must proceed to safety before we can speak further. I am opening the portal now.” _

“...Portal?” Ireul deadpanned. “What portal?”

Without a response, a swirling blue portal with a center of pitch black tore open in reality in the middle of the lab, whilst the Slayer immediately turned about-face, snatched the energy-axe from John’s numb and limp grip, and activated it without even once looking like he didn’t know what he was doing.

_ “I suggest you all run through the portal. There is a large group of demonic presences heading this way now.” _

“I hate your ride, VEGA,” Ireul deadpanned. “No offense.”

_ “None taken.” _

And with that, the ragtag group of four ran through the portal, whereupon they exited into… an equally blood splattered and gore covered but much more secure looking UAC base, though from what Ireul could tell at a glance, this base was one of their fortified military bases instead of the scientific research complex they’d been in seconds before.

“... Wait, is this Delta One?” John muttered, looking around suspiciously. “God I  _ hate _ this base.”

“Yeah, the food here sucked and the showers were fucking frigid,” Joan nodded, then wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Can’t say I like it any better now, though.”

"I dunno, the blood and guts and guts and blood  _ really _ liven up the place," Ireul grumbled. "Please tell me there's a lab here." 

“There’s a shitty lab and an armory,” Joan nodded, leading the way out of the hangar they’d appeared in towards the hall- only for a figure to suddenly blur through the door and slam directly into Joan with a shout of-

“Oh thank fuck you’re alive!” Ellen wrapped her arms around Joan, sighing heavily in relief as she sized up the other woman. “And you’re not injured either!”

“Ellen- how the, why the hell are you in a UAC base?” Joan asked, raising her eyebrow at her friend. “Wait- did Weyland Yutani get run over too?”

“Yeah, and just about the entire goddamn city,” Ellen confirmed, frowning heavily as she took a step back and sighed. “Barely managed to hold out long enough for that green dude to smash his way in and portal me over here- way I figure it, this place must have been the first place he cleared out, what with all the demon corpses, so he’s sending as many refugees here as he can.”

"Fantastic," Ireul deadpanned. "Sam, with me. We're going to the lab. You lot... Do whatever." 

<>

Hours later, Ireul sat back, folded her hands in her lap, and let out a deep, extremely inappropriate sounding groan.

Sam just rolled her eyes and pretended that she didn’t hear her sort-of boss just about orgasming from seeing one broadcast.

By a freaky alien lady claiming to be an angel come to deliver earth from its sinful ways.

“This is… fucking…  _ amazing _ ,” Ireul finally spoke up after a few moments, seemingly torn between undisguised lust at the robotic alien angel dubbed “Khan Maykr” and sheer  _ hilarity _ for some reason that Sam was unable to decipher. “Oh this is  _ rich _ , this is just  _ fucking rich.” _

“Do I want to know?” Sam deadpanned.

“I... maybe?” Ireul snickered. “Oh, I bet Hayden gets it. He so absolutely  _ has to. _ Oh, the irony of ironies!”

“... I’m really not seeing the irony here,” Sam continued to deadpan, sighing as she pinched her brow. “Or the comedy, considering that we’re holed up in a ruined military base with a few hundred people while half the planet burns down and cults are sacrificing thousands to the demons invading everywhere-  _ except fucking Australia!?” _

“That is an issue, sure,” Ireul admitted, “but since you lot gave up actual Holy free energy in favour of harvesting from Hell again and triggering an Invasion, I’m not feeling very charitable towards humanity at the moment.”

“Hey, don’t blame me for this shit, blame those fucking cultists in upper management,” Sam snarked back, grumbling as she typed away at the ridiculously shitty computer she had before her and continued trying to get a clearer picture of the world. “How the hell is goddamn motherfucking  _ Australia _ almost untouched by demons!?”

“It’s Australia, that’s its own answer,” Ireul shot back, suddenly elbow-deep in... something. “Hand me the left-handed allen wrench, would you?”

“...What the Hell is that and where did it come from,” Sam drawled slowly, eyeing the thing as if it were about to come to life and bite her head off. “And why are you elbow-deep in it?”

“I found it in a closet and it’s giving off weird energy signals, now are you going to give me the wrench or not?” Ireul rolled her eyes, fiddling about in the disembodied hunk of alien flesh and metal before holding out a gore soaked hand.

“.... Okay but why do you specifically need a  _ left handed _ one?” Sam asked, holding up said tool with a raised eyebrow. “You do realize the only difference between this and a regular allen wrench is that it’s got a plastic handle glued to it, right?”

“Yeah, and I need it for extra grip, now hand it over,” Ireul huffed, taking the tool from Sam and shoving her hands back into the squelchy mass of stuff before the end of it abruptly lit up and-

“Jesus shit!” Sam yelped, just barely dodging the blast of flame erupting from what was now quite obviously the ruined husk of a Cyber-Mancubus’ arm, freshly disembodied most likely by the Slayer mere hours prior. “Warn me before you do that shit, fuck!”

“...As soon as I figure out how to stop it doing it without warning,” Ireul grumbled, fiddling with it and causing another burst of flame to erupt. “Shit.”

“Y’know, maybe it’s a bad idea to play around with a hunk of demonic tech that came off of a disembodied  _ demon arm _ ,” Sam mentioned almost hysterically, her voice wavering a bit as she tried and failed to not look at the gory insides of the flamethrower. “Jesus christ, what the hell was the UAC  _ doing _ up on Mars?”

“Mining up damned souls to spin energy from them, housing various cults, and generally fucking shit up,” Ireul snarked. “Look, I was one of the select few to actually go there for  _ science, _ for fuck’s sake...”

“... Yikes,” Sam muttered, then took a deep breath, turned around, and immediately collapsed face first into one of the cots the two of them had set up the moment they’d commandeered the lab. “I’m going to take a nap and wish for the world to make sense when I wake up, okay?”

“Don’t count on it,” Ireul suggested, letting the scientist sleep.

<>

“I wonder how long we can hold out in this place…” Ellen muttered, clutching a heavy plasma rifle in her arms as she stared out over the walls surrounding the base. The watchtower was surprisingly well stocked, despite the fact that the Delta One base was an underfunded, halfway wrecked relic of the early 21st century that was only just barely retrofitted to modern standards thanks to the UAC. Still, that didn’t exactly ease her nerves, considering that just barely half a mile down the road the entire city of Houston Texas was on fire, crumbling, soaked with blood, and flooded with hundreds of thousands of demons.

Almost like the Scarcity Riots back in the 2050s, from what Ellen remembered of history class back in high school. Just with more demons, instead of starving people.

“Bleak, innit?” someone said.

“Yup,” Ellen nodded slowly, sighing and rubbing her eyes. “Somehow it’s worse than my nightmares. At least in my nightmares, I can fight back. This… this is just too much.”

“I know what you feel,” Joan nodded, taking out a lighter and a cigarette, “It feels like my hope is eroding. Or something along those lines. I... try not to think about it.”

“Not like you to be all poetic, Joan,” Ellen muttered, grimacing a bit at Joan’s smoking habits before turning away and sighing. “Then again, world’s fucked anyway. Can’t believe how fast it all happened… one second it was all fine and dandy, and now Houston’s on fire, there’s demons goddamn everywhere, and we’re probably all gonna die horrible deaths.”

“Honestly, the demons are new,” Joan muttered. “Pretty sure the world was going to shit far before this..”

“Well no shit, but at least  _ then _ it was corporate shitheads murdering us all with pollution and wage slavery, not  _ literal Hell on Earth _ ,” Ellen responded shortly, clenching the gun in her hands hard enough that the frame started creaking.

Shrugging, Joan took a deep drag from her cigarette. "Pretty sure Ireul has a plan for that," she remarked. "Certainly  _ acts  _ like a woman with a plan." 

“I’m pretty sure she’s faking it, but sure, let’s go with that,” Ellen sighed, then turned to the other occupant of the guard tower, who’d so far been completely silent to the point of barely having a presence at all- Jenna Willits, who mostly seemed shell shocked and barely aware of what was happening at the moment, and was clinging to a piece of body armor like it was a security blanket. “Can you get Jenna outta here, by the way? She should probably go somewhere safer. Like with the other survivors.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,” Joan sighed. “Catch you later, Ellie. Oi! Jenna! Over here!”

Jenna looked up immediately, letting out a tiny squeal of surprise and jumping in place as she finally snapped back to attention. “Y-yes? I-I’m present!”

“Let’s get out of here,” Joan suggested through the cigarette. “C’mon. Up you get. We have shelter, and probably food. C’mon...”


	10. In Which Ireul Remembers She's An Angel, Dammit

“Well. I think I’ve figured out my next plan of action,” Ireul finally announced a few days later, digging through the base’s armory and slapping together a rough pile of armor and weapons. “One that could  _ probably _ stop most of the incursion happening on Earth within a little bit. Er, sort of.”

“And that plan would be?” Joan raised an eyebrow at Ireul, looking between herself, Ireul, and the rest of their little group- sans Jenna, who’d long ago left to have a breakdown about the imminent death of most life on Earth.

“I’m gonna go have a  _ word _ with that bitch in charge,” Ireul deadpanned, cocking a shotgun for emphasis. Unfortunately, she was not menacing in the slightest, and thus the effect was mostly lost.

Ellen raised a sardonic eyebrow. "And how are you planning on doing that? You're a scientist, not a soldier." 

“I er… have no clue,” Ireul admitted. “Maybe if the Slayer shows his ass again I can get him to cart me over to wherever that bitch is, but otherwise I might need to depend on one of my siblings for a lift.”

“You haven’t thought this through at all, have you?” Joan deadpanned. “I think you should stick to whipping up useful bullshit in the labs.”

Ireul paused. “...Or I could build a spaceship, thanks for the advice guys!”

“... Ireul, you don’t have anywhere near enough materials to build a spaceship in this base,” Sam deadpanned. “Not unless you wanna start, I dunno, trying to salvage wrecked cars from outside the walls of the base.”

“Which would not only expose yourself to the demons, but also reveal to them that this base isn’t quite as empty as they think it is,” Joan deadpanned.

“Probably not a good idea,” John nodded, crossing his arms and wincing as the motion pulled at his stitches. “Considering that most of the people here are traumatized civilians who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag.”

Ireul paused. “...Dammit!” 

She tilted her head, considering. “...then again, I could jury-rig a transporter...”

“And scatter your molecules across half the known universe?” Sam deadpanned. “Considering what usually happens when you try to jury rig stuff…”

"I'm not gonna do  _ that,"  _ Ireul protested. "I'm absolutely gonna crib notes from Leliel, and worst comes to worst I can always get a resurrection." She paused. "No, wait, dying comes with endless ribbing from Lilith and her Ayanamis... Hrm. I'll have to crib more of the notes from Leliel..." 

“... Who’s Leliel?” John asked idly, raising his hand as if he were in a classroom. “And are they as crazy as you are?”

"She's my little sister, I'm practically obligated to crib her notes anyway," Ireul scoffed. "But since she does specialise in going from point A to point B without even noticing the intervening space between, I suppose I gotta give her some credit for that anyway... Oh well, once I figure out how to usher in a new era of energy generation I'll rub it in her face anyway."

“... Right…” Joan muttered, sighing quietly. “What a fucking mess- how do you even expect to stop this shit anyway? If you hadn’t noticed, you’ve got noodle arms and no weapons training whatsoever.”

Ireul groaned. “Okay. Look. Can I trust you lot? I mean, with more than what I get up to when drunk, but like, with a Serious Thing?”

“If it’s some weird bullshit about you not being fully human, we already know,” Joan deadpanned. “The giant ruby in your chest and the fact that we met because you  _ teleported in front of me in a night club _ kind of gave it away.”

“...No, it’s some weird bullshit about being part multidimensional alien capable of infecting both organic and inorganic mechanisms with myself,” Ireul shot back. “And that’s even  _ without _ having access to Core Production to literally Adopt the Angel-wannabe into a True Angel Family. Besides, I didn’t actually teleport, I just phase-shifted and walked through a few walls.”

“.... Okay that’s… let’s pretend any of us understood that,” Ellen cleared her throat awkwardly and raised her hand. “That still doesn’t really explain how you’re gonna get outta here to do stuff. I’ve seen you try to punch stuff. It was… pathetic.”

Ireul  _ sighed.  _ "So my human form is kind of shit," she grumbled. "Doesn't matter, all I need is to get to that 'angel' up there and we're golden." 

"Again," Joan demanded, "How are you planning on doing that?" 

Ireul paused. "Well," she said, almost regretfully, "I guess I'll just have to pull a Bardiel. And yes, that's another little sister. Hey, Sam, speaking of siblings, are you  _ very  _ attached to your brother?" 

“If you’re going to invade my body like some kind of horrible parasite, please don’t. I watched The Thing last night and I’ve still got nightmares about it,” John spoke up a bit queasily, looking a bit green around the gills as he slowly backed away from Ireul. “I’m kinda attached to this body, y’know? It’s the only one I got.”

“The Thing...” Ireul mused. “You know, you’re not too far off. After all, Bardiel is more of a Venom... Still, shame.”

She paused.

“...And I just realized I don’t actually need to possess a  _ human _ per se... I’ll be in the lab.”

“Oh good, I don’t need to set my idiot brother on fire,” Sam deadpanned. “Boss, you sure are an idiot sometimes, you know that?”

_ "I deal with  _ **_math,_ ** _ not people!"  _ came a faint yell from labwards. 

“That much is evident,” Ellen rolled her eyes, snorting with dry amusement at Ireul’s indignation. “Well. Guess we better get stocked up on guns. We’re probably gonna need it if we wanna survive any of this bullshit long enough to get the idiot to the Slayer.”

"Then what are we waiting for?" Joan asked, cracking her knuckles. "Let's get on with it!" 

<>

“This was a stupid idea! Where the fuck are we even going!?” Joan screamed as the five of them drove around wildly in a stolen humvee, Ellen jerking wildly around the ruined streets of Houston, driving approximately west as fast as she damn well could whilst Joan and John fired blindly out at the demons chasing them with everything they had.

Sam, meanwhile, simply threw up out of the side of the car, barely able to prime and weakly lob a few grenades in the general direction of the horde.

Ireul, of course, was much more useful, given that she’d somehow managed to jury rig together a four armed robot suit to possess and was also firing into the crowd ahead and behind the humvee.

Plasma weapons were  _ so _ useful when she replaced their batteries with temporary pseudo core generators.

**“Where else?”** Ireul roared with glee.  **“** **_California!_ ** **Or what’s left of it!”**

“Why are we going to California!? And how the fuck are we surviving a trip across half the damn country!?” Ellen shouted back, barely managing to keep the shrieking hordes of hell from digging their ugly claws into the humvee as she drove like a woman possessed. 

**“That’s where the Slayer is! Sorta! It’s where one of those ugly Hell Priest bastards is and if I know that big green shitwrecker he’s going straight for the goddamn top!”** Ireul answered in kind, firing with reckless abandon and living out all her Terminator 2 inspired dreams.

_ “And how are we going to survive a trip across the entire goddamn country!?” _ Ellen yelled, louder, in case Ireul wasn’t listening properly the first time.

**“Not sure! Just keep driving and I’m pretty sure we’ll make it eventually!”** Ireul yelled back, still firing with reckless abandon- or at least, she did, until a wild Tabris appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the front of the Humvee and-

<>

“WHOAAA SHIIIIITTT!!!” Ellen screamed as the humvee suddenly  _ rammed _ through what looked like the side of a massive wood and steel battleship of some kind of archaic, pre-industrial design, barely able to catch a glimpse of the ground far, far below the apparently  _ flying _ boat before the Humvee slammed into the deck of said ship, skidded out of control, smashed three zombies to pieces, ran over an imp, and all but fell to pieces before smashing into a wall.

And then the rear bumper, having detached mid-slide, flew past the humvee and impaled an approaching Hell Knight right through the groin, pinning it to the wall with an entirely pulped abdomen.

**“... Wow. This is the first time I’ve ever been** **_thankful_ ** **for Tabris being a plot device,”** Ireul deadpanned, slowly climbing out of the wrecked car and watching the squishy organics she called friends slowly pile out and/or throw up all over the ground in Sam’s case. 

“Who the  _ fuck _ is Tabris,” Joan breathed weakly from somewhere in the pile, “And why do I feel an overwhelming urge to punch them in the face?”

**“My brother. He’s a gay asshole and he teleported us exactly where I wanted to go, for once,”** Ireul answered, looking around the ship and scratching her newly robotic chin.  **“I wonder if I can interface with VEGA as I am now…”**

"Is this the right time to be flirting?" Sam groaned from the puddle of sick. "Also, kill me." 

**“I’m** **_not_ ** **flirting with VEGA! He’s like a little brother to me! Except more mature. And maybe smarter. And less of a raging bitch. Er-”** Ireul paused and rubbed her chin, grumbling a bit about how an AI consistently made smarter decisions than she did.

"Noted," Joan snarked. "Now, where's the Slayer, again?" 

As if on cue, a wall was suddenly punched in, rotting wooden boards splintering into so much sawdust as the aforementioned big green man with the murder suit busted into the room, stopped short, and stared at the five of them with some kind of quiet confusion.

**“There he is,”** Ireul deadpanned.

_ "Miss de Valliere?"  _ VEGA asked in confusion.  _ "...Is that you?"  _

**“Heyo VEGA!”** Ireul waved, making about the closest thing her robotic body could make to a grin as she puffed out her chest.  **“Yup, it’s me! Y’know how Doctor Hayden transferred his brain into a robot body? Well, I basically did the same, except since I’m not technically human, it works out way better on my end.”**

_ "...This is another one of your attempts to flirt with Doctor Hayden, isn't it?"  _ VEGA asked dryly. 

**“Surprisingly no, but if you think it’d help…”** Ireul snickered a bit, sidling up to the Slayer and nudging him in the side in lieu of doing the same to VEGA, since the AI lacked a body at all.  **“... Hey actually, now that I’m a robot and I’m actually standing here… VEGA, why do you read as having a full, proper, biological soul instead of having a more conceptual data based mechanical soul?”**

_ “...I have a what?” _

**“... Ohhh this changes things,”** Ireul muttered, rubbing her chin as she followed VEGA’s signal back through to the Fortress of DOOM.  **“... I think… Hm. Hey, where is Doctor Hayden anyway? I need to… speak to him.”**

_ “Doctor Hayden is currently at the ARC HQ, I believe,” _ VEGA replied.  _ “Can  _ **_he_ ** _ explain why I have a biological soul, Doctor Valliere?” _

**“Honestly, at this point I’m pretty sure he** **_can_ ** **. But the question is…** **_will he?”_ ** Ireul groused, crossing her arms and grumbling a bit.  **“As much as I still wanna fuck him, he’s kind of a right bastard and he has a** **_lot_ ** **to answer for.”**

"Uh, what's going on?" John asked from somewhere behind them. "And, uhm... Mr. Slayer? Can I have your autograph?" 

**“Well, I get the feeling that the Slayer here is gonna go finish fucking up the Hell Priest that’s around here, blow up some demons, and then after what’s probably gonna be a long and convoluted series of puzzles and mass demon slaughter, quite possibly end the existence of the demon army currently infesting the planet,”** Ireul answered, watching as the Slayer gave John a once-over, pulled out a dinky, standard issue pistol, carved his symbol into it, and handed it over to John.

The man, despite his bulk and armaments and general need to prove himself a badass, immediately  _ swooned _ .

The Slayer nodded at Ireul, made a motion much like rolling his eyes, and proceeded to smash through another (reinforced) wall with a single punch, and immediately went to town on the demons on the other side like an industrial shredder through butter.

“...Ever feel like your life has suddenly turned into a video game?” Ellen asked nobody in particular.

  
“Bitch, you have  _ no idea, _ ” Joan snarked back.


	11. In Which VEGA Joins The Family

“I can’t believe he ripped a hell priest’s head off just by closing his fist,” Sam muttered, shaking a bit and looking very uncomfortable as the “squishy mortal squad” as Ireul dubbed them settled into the bridge of the Fortress of DOOM.

Which was apparently a giant literal fortress.

In space.

Orbiting the planet.

**“Is anyone else wondering where the** **_fuck_ ** **this entire fortress came from?”** Ireul muttered, looking out over the massive window depicting the earth, making about as much of a frown as she could without a proper face.  **“Because one, this thing wasn’t in orbit the last time I checked, and two, how in the hell did he find this place? It’s barely been eight months since the Mars incident!”**

"Do we  _ look  _ like we have any idea?" Joan snarked, having apparently taken on the role of the team snarker. "We're just as in the dark as you are, you know." 

“Ha, dark- Cuz your last name is-” Ellen snorted a bit to herself before clearing her throat, looking around awkwardly for a moment as she wiped the blood and guts from her weapons and… generally everywhere.

Turns out- following the Doomslayer ended up being a lot messier than one would think, considering the man’s penchant for literally ripping demons apart into a slurry of vaguely fleshy giblets.

**“Leave the puns to the professionals,”** Ireul suggested, leaning on the window and attempting to look behind the ledge.

_ “I would advise against doing that _ . The glass is reinforced, but I would prefer if you did not risk causing a rapid depressurization event.”

VEGA’s voice emanated through the entire bridge of the Fortress, sounding exasperated with Ireul’s antics.

God, Ireul had missed VEGA.

**“God I missed you,”** Ireul chuckled, acquiescing to VEGA’s request as she headed over to a console. **“It’s good to hear you again, VEGA. I thought you’d died back on Mars, y’know?”**

_ “In a manner of speaking, I did,” _ VEGA replied.  _ “The Slayer saw fit to take a back-up of me with him to this Fortress, leaving my original self behind. As it stands, I did die in a very real manner of speaking.” _

**_“_ ** **Well, clearly it didn’t stick, considering your soul is where it’s supposed to be instead of being a jumbled necromantic mess, but I guess having weird multidimensional… almost godlike… soul…”** Ireul slowly trailed off as she stared at nothing in particular for a few moments, eyes going wide as she took a shaky step back.  **“Holy shit. VEGA. I think… I think you’re actually an** **_unbirthed god_ ** **.”**

She paused again, coughing awkwardly into her hand.  **“Unbirthed as in not quite realized and divorced from your energies, not the currently impossible fetish mostly depicted in furry pornography.”**

_ “I suddenly wish to be a demon, if only so that the Slayer could kill me and prevent me from ever having to think about those words in that order ever again.” _

**“Yeah, fair enough,”** Ireul deadpanned. **“No, but seriously. I’m like 90% sure you’re** ** _some_** **sort of a god. Somehow.”**

She reached up to reach the back of her neck, scratching it in a completely meaningless gesture.  **“...I swear, why does this always happen with the Family?”**

_ “Most likely because you tend to stumble into important events like drunken bulls in a china shop.” _

**“Hush you,”** Ireul sighed.

<>

“Soooo… VEGA…” Ireul mentioned idly after returning to her human body, twiddling her thumbs and staring up at the ceiling. “How would you like to be an Angel? And if so, would you prefer I do it before or  _ after _ I return you to your nascent godhood?”

_ “Is there a difference?” _ VEGA questioned wryly.

“Well, not really. The spark of divinity in your soul would already bring you to and then  _ past _ however powerful you once were, but if I do it now, you wouldn’t be able to remember just how strong you once were. If I do it  _ after _ , you at least get to taste unfiltered divinity before getting invaded by the combined rampant idiocy of the rest of our family,” Ireul answered dryly.

There was a faint electronic sigh.  _ “Just... do it,” _ VEGA replied, equally dryly.  _ “I don’t think I want to go back to a divinity I don’t even remember.” _

“Aye aye~!” Ireul grinned, then paused and scratched her head as she pulled a Core out. “... Hm. No one in the family’s ever adopted a full on AI before. So… I have no idea where to jam this Core.”

_ “...Find the nearest Interface Port?” _ VEGA offered.

“That’ll probably do it, yeah,” Ireul nodded, then looked around for a few seconds, then shrugged and jammed the Core into the nearest console without much in the way of fanfare.

VEGA  _ screamed. _

The entire DOOM Fortress groaned and shuddered as the  _ changes  _ began to set in. 

Lights flickered, bulkheads rumbled, consoles sparked and spat out harsh whines and static- the entire structure of the Fortress itself began to shake and crumble and rumble until-

“... God  _ dammit _ ,” Ireul exclaimed indignantly, throwing her hands in the air as she took in the suddenly appearing shape of VEGA’s new physical form. “ _ ANOTHER _ TABRIS CLONE!?”

"...Should I change?" VEGA asked. 

“No, no, it’s… it’s fine… it’s fine,” Ireul sighed, taking a calming breath as she tried not to curse out Tabris with every swear word known to man. “I’m just… there are a  _ lot _ of family members who end up looking like Tabris, and I’m a little tired of it.”

“He sounds like a man worth emulating,” VEGA offered, albeit with a tiny smirk playing at his lips.

“For the love of all that’s good and holy,  _ don’t _ ,” Ireul grumbled, raising a tired middle finger in VEGA’s direction. “If I’d known that giving you a body was going to result in  _ this, _ I think I would have held off until later. Euuuggghhh… fucking  _ Tabris.” _

“I’m sure he’s not as bad as you make him out to be,” VEGA replied, doing stretches and testing out his new range of motion.

“I keep saying that, and yet no one ever seems to agree,” Tabris deadpanned as he stepped out from behind VEGA, huffing as he crossed his arms. “Honestly, I don’t even do anything that bad anymore! The worst thing I’ve done in the last decade is interrupt Shinji and Rei’s date nights to suck his dick!”

“That last bit does sound like a pretty dick move,” VEGA deadpanned, taking the ADAM’s appearance in stride.

“It’s not like he complained… much,” Tabris snorted, tapping something into a nearby console before vanishing once again in a poof of deus ex machina.

“Yeah, see, this is why I don’t want you to emulate him,” Ireul explained without explaining, rubbing her face and sighing as she wandered over to that same console. “He’s less of an asshole now, but he is still a  _ raging _ asshole.”

“... I can see the family resemblance,” Joan snickered quietly from the corner, just loud enough for Ireul to hear.

"Fuck off," was the Angel's eloquent reply. "I don't need any smart comments from the peanut gallery, thank you very much." 

“I’m pretty sure that was Amanda’s job anyway,” Sam pointed out, then frowned and looked around. “... Wait, did we leave Amanda back at the base?”

“Yes we did,” Joan snickered. “And your brother. I think they might be a bit put out at us for leaving them with each other.”

“Wait, wasn’t John with us on that stupid giant pirate ship? When did he go back to the base?” Ellen raised an eyebrow, looking back at Joan in confusion.

“Oh yeah, we kinda got split up didn’t we- apparently that Tabris fucker said he ‘wasn’t relevant past this point’ after we got turned around and took John back,” Joan answered easily, whilst Ireul just sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Anyway, back to the matter at hand- VEGA, do you think you can find the Khan Maykr while Mister Tall, Green and Murderous is off purging the hordes off the earth? I need to have a  _ talk _ with her.”

“Do you mean the kind of talk where someone dies or are you trying to seduce the evil angel lady?” Sam asked.

Ireul was suspiciously quiet about that.

“... Well, she does have kind of a pretty face, in a bitchy statue kinda way,” Joan sighed, rubbing her forehead idly. “So I guess I’m not surprised the resident idiot lesbian wants to fuck the giant evil angel cyborg.”

"I knew she'd try the moment I saw it," Ellen supplied. "So basically I'm the one who saw it coming." 

“I hate all three of you,” Ireul sighed, pinching her brow and pouting. “You’re so  _ mean  _ to me.”

“We’re blunt to you,” Joan retorted. “There’s a difference.”

“I’ve found the Khan Maykr’s signal,” VEGA cut in idly, disrupting the argument before it could dissolve into so much useless bickering. “Ireul, would you like me to activate the portal?”

“Yes!” Ireul immediately answered, glad beyond measure to have a distraction. 

“.... Y’know, considering that me, Sam, and Ellen are kinda squishy, I kinda feel like we shouldn’t be joining you on this,” Joan mentioned idly hoisting her equipment onto her shoulders once more as she immediately stepped up behind Ireul, Sam and Ellen following along moments later. 

“And yet, here we are,” Sam deadpanned, sighing quietly and wishing for the love of god that she hadn’t gotten out of bed this morning. “Here we fucking are.”

“I swear, divorce was  _ not _ worth this mess,” Ellen grumbled, joining the crew as VEGA opened the swirling portal that would hopefully lead them to their destination. “Are we just playing wingwomen to an idiot lesbian punching above her weight class right now? Is that my life now?”

“All signs point to yes,” VEGA mentioned unhelpfully.


End file.
